[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

Steven Schveighoffer via dmd-internals dmd-internals at puremagic.com
Mon Jun 23 21:06:51 PDT 2014


On Jun 23, 2014, at 8:43 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals <dmd-internals at puremagic.com> wrote:

> On 6/23/14, 5:25 PM, Walter Bright via dmd-internals wrote:
>> On 6/23/2014 10:59 AM, Steven Schveighoffer via dmd-internals wrote:
>>> I think the issue is that some future developers will not contribute.
>>> Some people just don't want to give up all rights to their work.
>> 
>> What practical right does one retain when it is licensed under Boost?
>> 
>> Ya know, I don't want to retain rights to D. I originally tried to make
>> it public domain, until several people informed me that PD was not a
>> legal concept in many countries. Boost was the next best thing. I want
>> to continue to make D as available as possible, and that means the
>> license may need to be adjusted in the future. If contributors do not
>> share those goals, then yes, they should reconsider contributing to D.
> 
> I concur. If the contributor holding the copyright disappears, we can't change the license anymore. If the contributor holding the copyright has a falling with D, they can do harm by suddenly changing license for their part of Phobos. I don't see any good for anyone out of this - only the right to damage D in the future if they so want.

The only harm this does is that we need someone else to maintain this code. It does not retroactively change the license. Once it's in phobos, and it's boost, there's no reneging on that.

BTW, are we talking all of D or just DMD for requiring copyright assignment? I thought we were just talking DMD (of course, the XML thing would have been for Phobos, but I thought that was just an example).

> 
>> I do understand the issue of retaining credit for one's work. But I
>> believe that the github commit history amply supports that goal, and is
>> one of the reasons I am very much in favor of using github for D.
> 
> Don't forget the "Authors:" tag. In a few cases we've erred on the side of more credit, e.g. list as authors people who contributed only a small fraction of a module.

In some cases, as Daniel pointed out (great point, BTW), the original author may not be a github user, but some other code that a github user ported. I would not use the github contributors list as an authoritative list.

-Steve




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