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Re: logwatch: list of copyright holders



Don Armstrong wrote:
On Thu, 21 Feb 2008, Willi Mann wrote:
Can you explain to me what the consequences of an imcomplete list of
copyright holders would be? It should make it easier for me to argue
upstream.

The most important one is that not having all of the copyright holders
represented means that we don't actually know what terms we are able
to distribute the final work. A component of a work which is
unlicenced makes the entire work undistributable.

IANAL, but I don't think so, or better, I don't agree to
one assumption.

Simple patches are not copyrightable (so FSF doesn't
require copyright transfer).

IMHO the patches sent to a upstream author which
doesn't patch the original copyright (adding a name or
a copyright line) should be interpreted as the above case.
IMHO the author implicit acknowledges that the patch is
simple and doesn't include enough intellectual work.
So I interpret the patch as outside copyright laws

So from CVS (as you mentioned) should give an idea
if such contributions are outside the copyright laws.

For new files the situation is clearly different.

How did the upstream author find the patch and files
of other authors?
I assume that you and other send patches to CVS or to
the upstream author for inclusion.

If the author included code from other project, the license of
the imported code  should be know.

ciao
	cate


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