The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Sean Kelly]

Brad Roberts wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Aug 2008, Sean Reque wrote:
> 
>> Chris R. Miller Wrote:
>>
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>> Christopher Wright wrote:
>>>>> Dozens of people have worked on Tango. Tracking who owns the code is
>>>>> nontrivial, as is contacting some of them. It might be impossible to
>>>>> get a license change cleared.
>>>> I understand that. But my understanding (I am not a lawyer) of copyright
>>>> law is that a couple of lines of code are not copyrightable. But major
>>>> contributors to Tango should be reachable.
>>> I too am not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that contributions
>>> to Tango are still property of Tango and subject to the global Tango
>>> license.
>>>
>>> Maybe someone should ask a lawyer...  there's a good radio
>>> phone-a-lawyer guy in my area I could call.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> There could be cause for concern. This is from http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html
>>
>> """
>> Contributed Code
>>
>> In order to keep SQLite completely free and unencumbered by copyright, all new contributors to the SQLite code base are asked to dedicate their contributions to the public domain. If you want to send a patch or enhancement for possible inclusion in the SQLite source tree, please accompany the patch with the following statement:
>>
>>     The author or authors of this code dedicate any and all copyright interest in this code to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this code under copyright law. 
>>
>> We are not able to accept patches or changes to SQLite that are not accompanied by a statement such as the above. In addition, if you make changes or enhancements as an employee, then a simple statement such as the above is insufficient. You must also send by surface mail a copyright release signed by a company officer. A signed original of the copyright release should be mailed to:
>>
>> """
> 
> The number of people that have touched the runtime layer of Tango is very 
> limited.  The upper layers are of no concern for this thread.

So limited, in fact, that the two Tango members who have not given 
permission to use their code have never actually touched the runtime. 
I'm very diligent about the "author" labels in the runtime modules, so 
this is easy to see.  However, the problem is that there is no way to 
prove this to Walter, and he refuses to even look at Tango without 
permission from all of us for fear of "taint."  Thus the impasse.  Given 
Walter's experience with copyright issues I think his caution is 
certainly well-founded, but it does make things somewhat difficult if 
all of the contributors to Tango as a whole either can not or will not 
make their contributions Public Domain for use by Phobos.

To be honest, I would even much rather have stuck with an artistic 
license at least for my portion, but what can you do.  Fortunately, I 
trust that Walter isn't going to start trying to sell my code to 
companies and claim it's his own (my only real issue with the Public 
Domain license to begin with).


Sean