[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Leandro Lucarella via dmd-internals]

Walter Bright via dmd-internals, el 25 de June a las 09:04 me escribiste:
> As for some contributors turning away over this, that would be
> regrettable. But consider that over the years I've worked with a lot
> of good developers. Sometimes I'll run into one that is very, very
> concerned about other people stealing their ideas, and regularly
> accuse others of actually doing so. When we part ways, frankly, it's
> a relief not to have to deal with them anymore. Do I really want to
> have copyrights inextricably mingled with theirs, so I'm "joined at
> the hip" with them forever? No. And I doubt you would, either. Their
> contribution is just not worth the aggravation.

Walter, do you understand that problem is long gone since you chose the
Boost license? And that future concerns can be gone by adding that the
user can, at his choice, use the current version or a newer one?

All you are saying there is not a problem given the current conditions.
I understand your concerns from the past, but please don't ignore there
are not a concern now. That problem is already fixed. So why introducing
bureaucracy (a point that you are also ignoring completely) that many
contributors won't be willing to give for free (and I'm not talking
about money, but about good reasons in general), and blocking COMPLETELY
the possibility to "steal" external boost-licensed code to fix a
non-problem. As David said the cure is worse than the disease.

> If anyone should be mad about others stealing code/ideas, it should
> be me. I actually have had people steal my code, blatantly replace
> my copyright notice with theirs, and go on to make 5-6 figures off
> of it, more than once.

Again this is irrelevant to the discussion. I sympathise with your
feelings, but it has nothing to do with the discussion. We are already
using Boost license, so nobody here is concerned about their code being
used by someone else. You didn't legally lose your copyright when people
stole your code, they just committed a crime. I also felt bad a couple
of months ago when my camera got stolen. But that is completely
irrelevant to the discussion too.

> It's taken me many years to come to around to buying into Boost, and
> not worrying about other people stealing my ideas. These days, what
> makes me happy is if someone finds my code good enough to use!

Perfect! I think we all agree about that, and ceding copyright over your
code is not necessary to use Boost, as some other people said.

> I would make DMD public domain if I could. But legally that won't
> work. So I go for the next best thing. Consider also that:
> 
> 1. I don't have a well-financed phalanx of lawyers to consult, or
> even one, let alone have the resources to litigate anybody over the
> rights issue. It's not going to happen. Nor do I want to expend the
> time to do it. Nor is anyone offering such resources.

Perfect, in this sense it makes much more sense for people keeping their
copyright and making themselves responsible for any litigation. We are
only concerned about people suing D for some use of code that belonged
to someone else, not the other way around because we don't want to sue
anyone, we want D to be for all practical uses Public Domain. So I don't
see a need for require copyright assignment for this point. I will even
take burden from you and you'll need even less lawyers.

> 2. I want D to be as available as possible. That means I need to be
> able to make adjustments to the license as required to do so, on
> behalf of the greater D community.

Checked. Boost covers that, just add an option to use the software under
a newer Boost license, like the users of the GPL normally do.

> 3. You mentioned Boost1 and Boost2 licenses living alongside each
> other. That isn't practical with DMD. Contributions are all
> inextricably entangled with each other in the code. How could anyone
> try to tease out which are which license?

What? No. What I'm saying is adding, as the GPL recommend, something
like this:
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the Boost Software License as published by the
<SOMEONE>, either version 1.0 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.

That <SOMEONE> could be Digital Mars, you or whoever you want, that's
fine with me because the whole point is to keep the code as freely
available as possible, so as long as I can use Boost 1.0 I don't care if
one day you go bananas and decide to publish a Boost 3.22 which have all
kind of crazy restrictions, I can still use Boost 1.0.

What I don't want to gratuitously lose (and probably many companies
either) is the right to do whatever I want with that code too.

> 4. The credit issue is amply handled by github.

This is not a reason either for or against copyright assignment, so is
irrelevant. I think you still don't get there are other reasons (much
more important) than people egos not to require copyright assignment.

> 5. Many have expressed confidence that Boost is a perfect license
> and will never need changing.

I don't. Even when I think the risk is extremely low, that's not a
problem with what I said before, so I'll skip this point on that ground.

> All I hear there is my father saying "famous last words". Heck, I
> don't expect my house to burn down, either, but I still buy fire
> insurance for the simple reason that I cannot afford the loss. I don't
> have comprehensive insurance on my car because I can afford to lose
> the car. I (and I presume to include the other dmd contributors)
> cannot afford to lose DMD.
> 
> 6. With DMD assignment, the worst case (i.e. I break bad) is that
> the D community will have to rely on Boost 1.0. Without DMD
> assignment, the best case is that we have to rely on Boost 1.0. I
> don't see any case where the contributors or community is legally
> worse off with CA.

NO. Worse case is we LOSE lots of contributions and the freedom to grab
boost-licensed code and use it freely!!!

> 7. All the DMD contributors I have asked to assign copyright have
> done so. I view this with gratitude and great pleasure that we have
> such an awesome community of developers here, all willing to work
> together to make sure that D is and will remain free for all to use
> without constraint.

Well, you've been lucky so far, and you probably dealt only with amateur
contributors. The more D gets professionalized, the more you'll find
problems with copyright assignment. If you want to continue asking for
this but you don't make it mandatory, then that's perfectly fine with
me.

> 8. Dealing with this is not something that I want to do. I just want
> to write code. But who else is going to?

The best case scenario is nobody has to, and I think we are in that
scenario right now. You are fearing something from the past. "You are
living in the past, man! You’re hung up on some clown from the ’60s,
man!" :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esJl7MZoVww#t=14s

> Somebody has to step up and do their best to make these sorts of
> decisions, even when not everyone agrees. For better or worse, the
> ball's in my court, and I need to deal with it the best I can. I
> believe that copyright assignment for major contributors to the DMD
> compiler code is the most practical and pragmatic solution for us. It
> protects you, I, and the other contributors to ensure our work will
> not get discarded for unfortunate legal reasons. So I respectfully ask
> for your indulgence on this.

The funny thing is you can do whatever you want, you don't need anyone
agreeing with you to require this, I can't stop you, so you don't have
to ask for mine or anyone else's indulgence :)

Only the future will tell if this is a good choice or not, and even then
it would be hard to really tell, because there might be people that gets
put off from contributing even before you get to ask for the copyright
assignment.

Personally I think is a big mistake and is largely unjustified. I hope
I'm wrong.

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