[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals]

On 6/23/14, 9:06 PM, Steven Schveighoffer via dmd-internals wrote:
> On Jun 23, 2014, at 8:43 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals
> <dmd-internals at puremagic.com> wrote:
>> 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.

What if converting/relicensing it later to Boost 2.0 or some other 
license is in the best interest of D, and due to some technicality we'd 
need approval of all copyright holders? I don't know much about 
copyright law, but I think we can all agree it's complicated and prone 
to all sorts of loopholes. We can trust Walter to act in the best 
interest of D now and in the future; the alternative on the table is to 
trust instead an open union of persons.

> 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).

Everything under our github repo.

>>> 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.

The "Authors:" tag appears in the ddoc text and can contain any 
appropriate credits. Just grep for it. You'll see that all my 
contributions appear with my name and link to my website.


Andrei