Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 --> BSD

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:00:50 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:

> 
> > On Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:30:50 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote:
> 
> > What if the main creators of the software prefer acknowledging substantial
> > contributions with proper attribution and copyright notice in the file
> > preambles?
> 
> I don't think what the main creators decide to acknowledge (or not) has
> any legal bearing on the copyrightability of past contributions. (don't
> like the legal requirements of some work? just don't acknowledge it!)

Uh, come on, no smartass comments in this thread! :-(  A little bit of
familiarity with the development of Audacious (not the plugins!) is
necessary, or else the thread will focus on general things that don't
really apply.

Years ago, the software had started as a fork of BMP, which itself had
been a fork of XMMS. Not only one could find copies of the old list of
authors shipped with the new project releases, copyright notices were
present in (many?) inherited files, too. Either referring to individuals
or some "team" name. While working on the source code, the new team has
continued to maintain copyright notices but has also introduced new files
with different albeit compatible licensing. Eventually, old code for the
base software has been replaced/removed completely, and together with
deleting files or changing their content 100%, the copyright notices have
been replaced, too. I consider it likely and plausible that so much has
changed, not much old stuff is left anymore (and this is what the current
development team believes, too, according to a history section in the most
recent AUTHORS file). Some patch authors are still credited, others may
have contributed to BSD licensed project files before. Only they can tell,
and only the current main developers can tell the full story.

This may be another chance for smartasses to jump in with general legal
pedantry, but I don't consider that helpful.

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