[dmd-internals] DMD copyright assignment

[David Nadlinger via dmd-internals]

On 24 Jun 2014, at 2:43, Andrei Alexandrescu via dmd-internals wrote:
> If the contributor holding the copyright has a falling with D, they 
> can do harm by suddenly changing license for their part of Phobos. I 
> don't see any good for anyone out of this - only the right to damage D 
> in the future if they so want.

Wait, what?!

To the best of my knowledge (I am not a lawyer, obviously), this fear is 
rooted in a misunderstanding of how software licenses work. It is true 
that somebody could leave D development, take the code they contributed 
to Phobos and release a new version under a different license. However, 
while it would obviously be sad to lose a contributor, it wouldn't 
impact the project in the slightest, because they already granted us 
permission to use their contributions under the Boost license.

This issue seems to underlie all your arguments. Let's make sure we 
agree on what can happen or not before continuing the discussion.

Cheers,
David