Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 --> BSD

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2012-07-11 at 12:21 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 06:57:21 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> 
> > > Do you think a few more verdicts like that will influence small FLOSS
> > > projects? In that they will not apply proposed fixes "faster, faster,
> > > faster",
> > 
> > You complained no one here was a lawyer and any residual changes would be
> > deemed not qualifying under copyright law. 
> 
> I questioned that. I didn't claim it. In particular, I questioned whether
> authors of one-line or tiny patches (and we still don't know what code
> changes are subject for discussion and whether they are still left), who
> explicitly offer this "work" to project authors for copying or as
> inspiration, would always expect full consideration of copyright and
> related rights for such a contribution.  

The problem is you're approaching things in exactly the wrong direction.

Look at it this way: it's the *project* which is in the exposed,
dangerous position, not the contributors. You're arguing it almost the
opposite way. A lot of your arguments rely on notions of common sense,
fair play and so on, which just isn't a good approach.

To be specific: it _doesn't matter_ if 99.99% of all authors of one-line
or tiny patches have no inclination to expect full consideration of
copyright. If 0.01% of contributors do, then the project is in a very
dangerous position if it does something to violate those contributors'
rights.

As several others posted: the point is that as a project that accepts
contributions it's very legally dangerous to take the approach that
everyone will act in good faith and be okay with you appropriating their
(possible) copyright rights. Even if every one of your five hundred
contributors _except one_ does this, that single one can pose you huge
problems. As a project you have to take a defensive, paranoid posture
and take steps to absolutely ensure that _no-one_ can _possibly_
challenge your actions in regards to their copyright rights. You don't
want a single person to even _start_ any kind of challenge, because then
you're already into expensive legal territory and you've lost. It
doesn't matter if two years down the road, a judge would ultimately
decide their contribution was trivial and not deserving of protection,
because you're already out two years of lawyer fees.

It's just too risky as a project to take it upon yourself to determine
which contributions were significant or not. _Especially_ without
reliable legal advice.

No-one debating this with you is asserting, definitely, that you're
wrong about any specific assessment of whether a particular contribution
is subject to copyright protection. They don't have to say that for
their position to be valid.

> I questioned whether the code
> contributions may have been considered insignificant by *both* the creator
> and the project developers as to silently agree that no special or legally
> pedantic handling would be necessary, 

It's extremely dangerous to simply assume such a silent agreement
exists. How do you tell the situation where it does from the situation
where it doesn't? What legal force does such a silent agreement have?
(the answer is none.)

> and giving credits in documentation
> would be a fair move and honest acknowledgement of the support and not due
> to legal requirements only (a contributor's right to be credited),
> with the contributor actually demanding to be credited. Audacious wouldn't
> be what it is without its core developers doing most of the work, and
> I think most external contributors understand that and accept that.

See above: it doesn't matter if _most_ external contributors understand
and accept that. The project is in an exposed and dangerous position if
_even one_ does not. The law isn't some kind of democracy - you can't
show up in court and ask the judge to take a vote of contributors.

> Meanwhile, there has been a clarification from an Audacious core developer
> via private mail to several participants in this thread, confirming the
> effort that has gone into trying to track down and contact everyone
> holding copyright on a piece of the Audacious source code.

That's exactly what's necessary - the project needs to contact anyone
who might _possibly_ hold copyright. Not just anyone the project thinks,
based on their judgement of the significance of their contribution,
_actually does_ hold copyright, for the reasons stated above - the
project has to err on the side of caution.

I don't know the specifics of this case, but it seems from the initial
response that started all this that the effort has missed at least one
contributor of a translation. That's an excellent illustration of the
point: as spot said, whether translations of apps are subject to
copyright or not is _questionable_. It's _possible_ contributors of
translations don't have copyright and couldn't object to the
re-licensing. But on the other hand, it's possible they _do_ and _can_.
It would be risky for the project to rely on a belief that they don't;
it's far safer and more responsible to take the cautious path, assume
they do, and try to contact them all.

(I am, of course, not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal
advice. But I'm right! :>)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net