Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 --> BSD

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Michael Schwendt <mschwendt at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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,

This is not true, and it's the point I was responding to correct.

(I consulted an attorney specializing in US copyright before posting my message
as well, which was why there was a multi-hour gap between your message
and mine.
I point this out not as proof that what I'm saying is correct but
to make it clear that my response wasn't just casual navel gazing.
It sounded like you were advocating an understanding which was inconsistent
with the law, and your follow-up appears to confirm that I wasn't
misunderstanding that much)

It's certainly possible for contributions to be so minor that they gain
no copyright. But this determination can be complicated and fact
specific. Certainly the dividing line is not one of updating the copyright
headers.

> and the lack of attribution in the copyright notice makes it very easy
> to forget/ignore/disregard who may have committed a substantial part of
> the file.

Absolutely. It makes it easy to do the right thing and so its a best practice
 to make sure all the names get listed, and its an understandable and forgivable
mistake when someone unlisted gets forgotten. But it doesn't make it appropriate
or lawful to change the licensing without the consent the relevant copyright
holders, even if they aren't listed, such errors need to be corrected
when discovered.

(At least if the forgotten people are actually copyright holders, and that
depends on a lot of details which I'm not aware of for this case)