Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 --> BSD

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:57:31 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:

> 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.

I wrote that in the context of files giving credit to *some* people [*],
which could (!) be an indication that any _unknown_ changes, which other
people may have managed to get included in those files, likely have not
been considered substantial enough to qualify for copyright. It could even
be that the submitters did not consider the patches substantial enough
themselves. That's speculation, I don't like it. But it has been only a
question to Petr, because there are lots of files in Audacious that give
credit. I've never asked to be credited but have been mentioned
nevertheless, and I can only guess what "work" has been recognized.
I would not claim rights on tiny patches and bug-fixes another developer
could come up with, too, even if a copyright law pedant would claim that I
could.

[*] Those people believe they do most of the original work to qualify
for copyright.

> > 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.

Sure they do. We can go on endlessly. They can reject copying something
verbatim, and they may change the code nevertheless in either the same or
a very similar way. Coincidentally or because it's an obvious way (and
no patented stuf, hey!). Then somebody else would need to decide whether
copyright law is applicable.