On 2012.05.06 23:56, Peter Stuge wrote: >> Then please define full owership. > > --8<-- http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright > A copyright is a law that gives the owner of a written document, > musical composition, book, picture, or other creative work, the right > to decide what other people can do with it. > -->8-- > > ..while other people only have rights, or authority, per some license.
Well, the issue, which is how copyleft came into being really, is that, because it is a legal concept, it has to be defined by a legal license. So I should have stated: "please define full ownership within the legal context of the LGPL license", as this is the only definition that matters. > You wrote "you have no authority whatsoever over what happens in > libusbx" and my point was that that's not quite true, as you confirm. We're not going to change the license anytime soon, but, yeah, if you want to be technically correct, you do have some authority, along all other code contributors, over what happens if we were to decide to change the license (though LGPLv2 -> LGPLv3 for instance would not require any approval from the original authors, so you wouldn't have authority there either). This is very limited authority though, and one that you are unlikely to ever be in a position to apply because we previously established on this list that we weren't going to change the license to something that would require approval. Thus, I could very much re-state that "you have no authority whatsoever over what happens in libusbx" and it would also still be correct. > I don't expect that libusbx would want me to change the license of my > work, but I think it's still valid and important to note that we all > own the copyright of our respective work and thus I do have some > authority over what happens within libusbx, specifically the right > to decide what other people can do with my work. Nope. The only authority you have is limit the people's possibility to change the license. That's _very_ different from "right to decide what other people can do with my work", which implies having a say on how they want to modify the code (else you should use "the right to decide how other people can relicense my work"). The LGPL doesn't grant you the (general) "right to decide what other people can do with my work" period. The use of a general statement such as this one, that may be misinterpreted to signify the granting of much more rights than the very limited one it entitles you to with regards to licensing, should be avoided IMO. > The original license > of course always applies, ie. my right is only relevant if someone > wants to change the license, but that is still decidedly different > from "no authority whatsoever" in my opinion. Well, considering that an incompatible license change is an abnormal event during the life of a project, which, as was established before on this list, is not something that is going to happen for libusbx, and that this is the only place where your "authority" would apply, the difference between my "no authority whatsoever" and your "I do have some authority" is, again, inconsequential. >> The ONLY place where ownership matters is when a derivative project >> wants to change the license, > > Yes, exactly my point. Maybe it's me, but that wasn't clear from your original reply. You seemed to use the licensing as an example to somehow justify the idea that you could impose your wishes on how our code and commits should be handled, as per your authorship of the original code. > Thanks again for clarifying, and thanks for the undeserved credit! Be mindful that it may be be a blessing or a curse... Regards, /Pete ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ libusbx-devel mailing list libusbx-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/libusbx-devel
