[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals]

Do you have a response for the existing precedents in which valuable 
work has been wasted?

More generally (and for everyone), and please don't take this the wrong 
way as it comes from someone who knows next to nothing about this: I see 
there's considerable discussion here; what is the larger issue that 
seems to go unstated? It's entirely fine to want to maintain copyright 
of one's work, but on the face of it OSS seems to be a poor vehicle for 
that.


Andrei

On 6/23/14, 3:42 AM, Daniel Murphy via dmd-internals wrote:
> You don't need to deal with it in the future, because boost allows you
> to change to a more restrictive license if necessary.  eg We could
> change it to BSD or GPL _without_ needing copyright assignment.  This
> is only a problem if we want to remove restrictions, and there doesn't
> seem to be any point to doing that.
>
> Also, AIUI we will not be able to change the license of phobos and
> druntime anyway, since there is no copyright assignment for those.
> We're 'stuck' with boost either way.
>
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 3:34 PM, Walter Bright <walter at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 6/22/2014 8:14 PM, Daniel Murphy wrote:
>>>
>>> Those are all problems with incompatible licenses, and boost is
>>> supposed to solve these.  Now that the frontend is boost, why do we
>>> still need copyright assignment?
>>
>>
>> Maybe, maybe not. I don't know what kind of issues will come up in the
>> future, and how could I deal with it if major contributors are no longer
>> available? What if there's some legal nit with Boost and it needs to be
>> adjusted? GPL and BSD licenses have undergone revisions, would we want to
>> get stuck forever with an obsolete Boost?
>>
>> Like I said, we've already had this problem more than once - and the
>> resolution was abandonment of valuable work.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I think for the frontend we're in good shape now without copyright
>>> assignment.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 12:28 PM, Walter Bright via dmd-internals
>>> <dmd-internals at puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 6/22/2014 2:15 PM, David Nadlinger via dmd-internals wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 22 Jun 2014, at 20:38, Walter Bright via dmd-internals wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's still a good idea, as I'm not sure what issues may come up about
>>>>>> it
>>>>>> in the future. We've had contributors disappear before, questions come
>>>>>> up,
>>>>>> and we were forced to abandon their contributions as a result.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Putting aside all the other reasons why I think requiring copyright
>>>>> assignment now is a really bad idea:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. What instance of troubles are you referring to, specifically?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jascha Wetzel wrote a Windows debugger in D, for example. His license was
>>>> incompatible, he disappeared, his project was abandoned as a result. Then
>>>> there's the case of the Tango code, such as the excellent XML parser -
>>>> can't
>>>> be incorporated into dmd because of the license. All that value got
>>>> abandoned; nobody benefited from it. What a waste.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> 2. How would a dubious copyright assignment give you any more security
>>>>> than licensing a contribution under Boost?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If issues come up that only the copyright holder can resolve, we will be
>>>> completely unable to resolve them. For example, I needed assignments in
>>>> order to change the license to Boost. If one major contributor had
>>>> refused,
>>>> then where would we be?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Also note that systematically requiring copyright assignment before
>>>>> merging a change on GitHub is not something we are currently doing. I
>>>>> was
>>>>> just not sure whether it is something you want to start doing.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I don't think it's critical for smallish contributions, as they can be
>>>> worked around if necessary. For larger ones, yes.
>>>>
>>>> You say you're worried about something with this - can you explain?
>>>> What's
>>>> "really bad" about it?
>>>>
>>>> _
>>
>>
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