[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Steven Schveighoffer via dmd-internals]

On Jun 24, 2014, at 2:16 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu <andrei at erdani.com> wrote:

> On 6/24/14, 7:59 AM, Steven Schveighoffer via dmd-internals wrote:
>>> 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.
>> 
>> Much of these arguments seem to stem from ignorance and fear of the
>> future. At some point, I think we need to analyze what actually can
>> happen rather than assuming what can.
>> 
>> I am not a lawyer, maybe we should involve one.
> 
> This is exactly the kind of overhead we're trying to avoid in the first place. Looks like you want to transform a triviality into an interesting legal endeavor, and on someone else's money. -- Andrei
> 


I'm not the one complaining that we could be in legal trouble for doing what almost every OSS project on the planet does. Really this is kind of silly to have this debate, everything is boost, there doesn't seem to be any outstanding license issues that require movement of rights.

But things are what they are now, with DMD contributions requiring assignment, and phobos/druntime not requiring them, whether we move on in ignorance or with counsel, I'm OK with things the way they are. Please don't think I was suggesting you hire lawyers on my behalf. But I will not be assigning copyright of my phobos and druntime work to DM based on your fear I might disappear, I think the boost license is enough, and I haven't seen enough information here to say that I would be able to retain rights to such work on other projects. I've already relinquished any contributions to DMD (I think maybe once I submitted a PR to fix a typo in an error message).

Giving away all rights to hundreds of hours of work done on free time, or even at the core of someone's business may seem trivial to you, I'm not sure everyone feels that way.

-Steve