[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[Daniel Murphy via dmd-internals]

Those are all problems with incompatible licenses, and boost is
supposed to solve these.  Now that the frontend is boost, why do we
still need copyright assignment?

I think for the frontend we're in good shape now without copyright assignment.

On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 12:28 PM, Walter Bright via dmd-internals
<dmd-internals at puremagic.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/22/2014 2:15 PM, David Nadlinger via dmd-internals wrote:
>>
>> On 22 Jun 2014, at 20:38, Walter Bright via dmd-internals wrote:
>>>
>>> It's still a good idea, as I'm not sure what issues may come up about it
>>> in the future. We've had contributors disappear before, questions come up,
>>> and we were forced to abandon their contributions as a result.
>>
>>
>> Putting aside all the other reasons why I think requiring copyright
>> assignment now is a really bad idea:
>>
>> 1. What instance of troubles are you referring to, specifically?
>
>
> Jascha Wetzel wrote a Windows debugger in D, for example. His license was
> incompatible, he disappeared, his project was abandoned as a result. Then
> there's the case of the Tango code, such as the excellent XML parser - can't
> be incorporated into dmd because of the license. All that value got
> abandoned; nobody benefited from it. What a waste.
>
>
>
>>
>> 2. How would a dubious copyright assignment give you any more security
>> than licensing a contribution under Boost?
>
>
> If issues come up that only the copyright holder can resolve, we will be
> completely unable to resolve them. For example, I needed assignments in
> order to change the license to Boost. If one major contributor had refused,
> then where would we be?
>
>
>
>>
>> Also note that systematically requiring copyright assignment before
>> merging a change on GitHub is not something we are currently doing. I was
>> just not sure whether it is something you want to start doing.
>
>
>
> I don't think it's critical for smallish contributions, as they can be
> worked around if necessary. For larger ones, yes.
>
> You say you're worried about something with this - can you explain? What's
> "really bad" about it?
>
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