On 19 July 2017 at 01:03, Chas Emerick <c...@cemerick.com> wrote: > > > On 7/18/2017 14:40, Alex Miller wrote: > > > If all of the nontrivial contributors to the project decide they >> want to change the license later, do we also need to obtain Rich's >> assent? > > > This has nothing to do with Rich or the contributors. The project is > available as open source under a license and you may only modify and > distribute the code under the terms of the license. In this case, EPL > requires that derivative code be released under EPL afaik. > > > My point was that the license under which code is distributed can be > changed, with the assent of all contributors. >
My layman understanding of licensing/CA's is that the licence/terms of the project could theoretically be changed with either: - The assent of all contributors except Rich. If as you say Rich has no commits in the code, then providing everyone else who owns copyrights to their contributions on the code agrees to the new licence/change then the fork could be relicensed, and Rich's blessing would not I think be needed; as everyone else together will hold copyrights on the code also. I'd imagine in this case even the (c) attribution to Rich could be removed if everyone agreed. - The assent of just Rich. As Rich is the only person who owns copyrights to every contribution, he could singlehandedly relicense a fork as he wishes. Hypothetically either one or both of these could happen in a fork. Obviously this puts Rich in a privileged position whilst the project remains in contrib behind the CA process. If the project forked to github without a C/A Rich couldn't stop it (as it's also been licenced under the EPL). However future contributions on this fork would not be (c) to Rich so relicensing might be even harder; as you'd be forced to get the assent of everyone else. The only other thing I can think of that's theorerically relevant is that contibutors under the CA promise not to sue Rich for him breaching any patents etc, but I don't think the CA grants that privilege back to the contribtors. R. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
