[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals]

On 6/24/14, 5:23 PM, David Nadlinger wrote:
> On 25 Jun 2014, at 0:55, Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals wrote:
>> What seems pointless to me is this long and protracted discussion
>> around... around what? What or whom are we talking about protecting
>> here? It's not a practical matter, and it's not a matter of
>> principles. If protecting the copyright of one's work is high on one's
>> list of priorities, OSS is not the best place to be.
>>
>> Crap has happened before, among reasonable people, and in ways that
>> had not been predicted. We don't have money. We don't have lawyers. We
>> don't want to spend time analyzing, projecting, estimating, or
>> speculating. We want to keep things simple and save everybody involved
>> complications while keeping everything as open as possible. This very
>> discussion is a huge waste of time wanking over nothing. What the heck
>> are we even _talking_ about, folks?
>
> You know what's funny about this, Andrei?
>
> I don't know whether you realize it or not, but your message could be
> used equally well _against_ requiring copyright assignment.
>
> To put it another way, if you don't think it's worth the discussion,
> let's go the path of least resistance, to continue what we are doing and
> not require copyright assignment.

A fair point, but I see it a different way.

The creator, first implementer, and main contributor of the D 
programming language is asking for something that would make his life 
simpler and asks me for a bureaucracy token. It doesn't impact the 
usefulness of my work and doesn't take away credit for public work I do, 
and the person asking is about as candid as it could ever get.

I've done a lot "worse" in the past. All of my books are copyrighted by 
Addison-Wesley Longman. My name is on two patents owned by Facebook. 
Most articles I wrote are copyrighted by whoever published them. All of 
my videos are copyrighted by the respective organizations and events, 
some of which I believe are stereotypically evil corporations. All were 
a lot of hard work. Some of these were paid for, but most not. Had I 
started a debate like this with them, their lawyers would have probably 
ceased the collaboration and everybody would have been worse off, and 
most of all the "greater good". Being liberal about making my work 
available and letting credit reach me instead of obsessing over it may 
as well be the best policy I've held throughout my career.

Now am I to self-righteously argue with Walter Bright just because he's 
more accessible and doesn't have lawyers to slice and dice things for 
him? I wouldn't find that an honorable thing to do.

I'm out of this discussion. I'll let Walter decide. If he decides to 
forgo potential contributions from people afraid he'll steal their work, 
so be it.


Andrei