[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Leandro Lucarella via dmd-internals]

Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals, el 23 de June a las 23:17 me escribiste:
> 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.

Yeah, that's the real way to go if the goal is to protect D's interests.
Walter could go bananas too, or die. I know at this point this option
might be unrealistic and the most practical solution is to keep giving
the rights to Walter/DigitalMars, but I can definitely understand people
being concerned about giving up their rights to a private company that
has no legal obligation to do what's best for D instead of its own
interests.

Then, there are a bunch of very serious projects that have settled with
a license and don't require copyright assignment, like LLVM (which I
think have a similar position to D in terms of being freely available
for any use). The FSF asks for copyright assignment not to be able to
change the license in the future (for that reason they say in the
license that you can use any newer GPL version, at your choice), but for
litigation reasons, to be able to enforce the license, which I guess is
not a concern for D if you basically want to have it effectively as
Public Domain.

http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#copyright
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca)                     http://llucax.com.ar/
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