Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 --> BSD

[Matthew Garrett]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 04:21:12PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:

> Pedantry alone wouldn't be a bad thing. Lack of accuracy is what makes it
> bad. Combine pedantry with accuracy, and this thread may become helpful.
> But instead, there is a lot of speculation and assumptions, and
> rose-coloured glasses are involved, too. And no IANAL disclaimers seen
> anywhere.

Saying things like:

"and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, 
don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of 
it,"

is inaccurate and dangerous. It's entirely appropriate to indicate that 
it's untrue.

> > What I don't consider helpful is making broad generalizations about
> > legal issues. Copyright doesn't fail to exist because it isn't
> > attributed. 
> 
> That's a generalization. And a dangerous one. In particular, since we would
> first need to discuss what requirements a creation must meet to qualify
> for copyright. That alone is not a simple topic.

No we don't. A lack of attribution does not result in copyright failing 
to exist. The work not being copyrightable in the first place may result 
in copyright failing to exist, but that has nothing to do with 
attribution.

> It boils down to some forms of etiquette, whether and when main project
> developers recognize contributed patches as substantial and automatically
> give proper credits *before* a copyright holder wants to enforce rights.

It boils down to copyright law. Nothing more. Nothing less. Project 
maintainers simply don't get to make that choice on behalf of others.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org