[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Steven Schveighoffer via dmd-internals]

On Jun 24, 2014, at 2:33 AM, Walter Bright <walter at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> 
> On 6/23/2014 9:00 PM, Steven Schveighoffer via dmd-internals wrote:
>> 
>> A statement saying that any contributors must agree that they give permission for Digital Mars to change the license of their code to any future version of boost license would be sufficient and reasonable, IMO. Remember that if any issues ever arise with boost license, the boost project is sure to fix them, and then we can adopt that new license.
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> LLVM doesn't require copyright assignment, but they admit on their site that they are aware that implies the LLVM license can never change. GCC requires copyright assignment for larger contributions.

I think as Luca says, it's to have standing to sue in court, not to be able to relicense. GCC's projects ALWAYS give the user the option of using any future version of GPL, so they have a similar stipulation to what I stated.

> 
> If the copyright holder agrees to such a clause, what rights do they retain as copyright holder? Such open-ended clauses may also even be invalid - I've never heard of one. Going with copyright assignment is simple and direct. I don't care to try and break new legal ground here. I don't care to risk the hard work of every contributor to D by trying a novel legal theory.

This isn't too complicated, it's the same rights they have that aren't granted by the license. Basically, they are licensing under boost and any future version of boost. The GPL is the example I'm thinking of, it's very pervasive.

When I license code under a copyright, I retain the ownership rights. This means I can relicense as I please, I can write derivative works without permission from anyone else, I can redistribute however I want. But the license I grant to you dictates what you can do. All I am doing is granting you a perpetual right to relicense under a future version of boost. I don't think this is new legal ground.

> 
>> By this same logic, we can lament the fact that we can't incorporate libmysql because we didn't get it's owner's permission to license under boost instead of GPL. It's not a fair comparison -- Oracle/Sun did not want to contribute to D, so why should we worry about that?
> 
> Because we don't really care about libmysql's license. If it's license becomes incompatible with D's goals, we'll just find another library. It won't destroy D. We can even survive various modules in Phobos needing to be rebooted over licensing issues. It'd be a lot harder to survive dmd being holed below the waterline.

We don't really care about tango's XML library's license. It's license is incompatible (note that libmysql's license IS currently incompatible), it won't destroy D. We can survive by using a compatible XML library, or writing our own. Really the arguments are exactly the same.

I think instead of playing a guessing game as to what some future event might do to DMD, let's first actually show what event can happen besides some nebulous unproven concerns. Living in constant fear of the unknown is not a way to plan for the future. So far, the example problems we've been given would not be solved by having sole ownership of the copyright of DMD or Phobos.

-Steve