Copyright for Phobos to D Foundation

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Sat, 2016-05-28 at 17:50 +0000, Seb via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> One thing that confused me a lot in the beginning, is that every 
> Phobos module has it's own copyright - I am not a lawyer, but it 
> sounded for me pretty weird that in theory I could get sued by a 
> lot of Oracle-like patent trolls.
> I imagine the same effect also for companies when they read a 
> different copyright on every module in Phobos.

I am not sure of the situation with GDC since the GCC folk are involved
with that – Iain may be able to take a view on this. Also I am not
totally sure of the LDC situation. However I think it would be a very
good idea if DMD, LDC, GDC, Phobos, druntime, and Dub and the
repository were all copyright the D Foundation, and that all
contributions had a copyright share or transfer.

Contribution agreements are notoriously complicated, cf. the situation
over the Canonical one. However, it is not beyond the bounds of
possibility that there is lawyer with licence to operate in the
jurisdiction that the D Foundation is incorporated in who could draw up
a suitable copyright share/transfer agreement that can be digitally
signed. This agreement would then be required for any new
contributions. Dealing with retrospective can be difficult but not
impossible.

Contribution agreements sometimes cause a lot of grief, cf. the
original Gradle one as well as the aforementioned Canonical one.
However, it can be done and to great effect. The benefit of getting
over the problems so as to allow all ownership to at least include D
Foundation is unquantifiable per se, but anecdotally is very great.
Having a clear central owner of a technology gives organizations
confidence that the technology is not going away. I know D has been
around over a decade and isn't going away, but organizations (and their
lawyers) do not think that way. They want a clear central organization
as owner with responsibility. I have seen this with Apache Groovy and
SCons over the years.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/digitalmars-d/attachments/20160529/3961209e/attachment.sig>