You raise a good point, I would think that we would need to post something on the submit page stating the copyright nature. My brothers are lawyers, I will check with them as to what the right thing to do is.
-Thomas S Hatch On Feb 6, 2011 10:49 AM, "Xyne" <x...@archlinux.ca> wrote: > Eric Waller wrote: > >> I am not a lawyer and I generally tune out all license flame wars. >> That said, PKGBUILDS generally do not contain copyright or license >> declarations. Unless I am mistaken, that means someone who comes into >> possession of a PKGBUILD does not have the right to republish it. >> >> As a minimum, I think Arch should get a nod from the creator of a >> PKGBUILD prior to absorbing it into the colective -- It might help >> avoid any misunderstandings. > > What is the legal status of files submitted to the AUR? I have always assumed > that anything uploaded to the AUR is automatically licensed under the GPL or > something similar, in the same way that content contributed to the wiki is. > > I can't find anything that states this on the AUR site, which is a potentially > calamitous legal oversight. > > The legal issue should be cleared up. If we needed to obtain explicit > permission from every contributor then the AUR would cease to be useful. You > would not be able to adopt and update PKGBUILDs without permission, and you > would need to enable users to delete their own PKGBUILDs when they decide to > withdraw permission. >