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Re: Releasing software sponsored by an employer
On Wed, 2005-02-11 at 10:55 -0500, John Morrissey wrote: As part of my "day job," I'm working on a piece of Debian-specific software. I would like to release it under the GPL and the company is receptive [...] Good for them and good for you. Obviously, since it was written using their time and resources, they hold copyright on it. That's not the reason that they hold copyright on it, though; it's because you have an employment relationship. If I lived in my parents' basement and wrote software on their computer, I'd still have copyright on the work I'd created. If you write a novel on a stolen typewriter, you still hold copyright on the novel. They would like to retain ownership, so copyright assignment or a quit claim isn't feasible. (In other words, we don't want to follow the GPL's fictitious Yoyodyne example where the company disclaims copyright.) Yeah, that Yoyodyne example sure is a relic of a different time, isn't it? "Version 69"! HYUK HYUK HYUK! I'm wondering what kind of documentation we should have that explicitly authorizes me to release this software (copyright still held by the company) to the public under a DFSG compliant license. A standard GPL copyright notice, with the company's name (preferably full legal name) in the slot. (No, the company is not the author; that's the slot where the copyright-holder's name goes, and the GPL assumes that the author and rightsholder are one and the same.) You'll probably want to give your own name and contact info somewhere else in the source code and documentation. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Debian Project (http://www.debian.org/)
Re: Releasing software sponsored by an employer
Justin Pryzby writes: > On Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 09:23:40PM +0100, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: >> John Morrissey wrote: >> > I'm wondering what kind of documentation we should have that explicitly >> > authorizes me to release this software (copyright still held by the >> > company) >> > to the public under a DFSG compliant license. > IMHO it would be very nice if they could give you a PGP message > confirming what the GPL trailer has: > > Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program > `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. > > 1 April 1989 > Ty Coon, President of Vice The obvious alternative is for the company to retain copyright and produce a signed message that they license the code under the XYZZY license (some particular DFSG-free license that the company likes). The signature could be on a single piece of paper, a digital signature on a copy of the code that incorporates the license terms, etc. That disclaimer of copyright is more applicable to software that an employee produces in his or her free time, and should rarely be used when the employee wrote the program as a job function. Michael Poole -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Releasing software sponsored by an employer
On Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 09:23:40PM +0100, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: > John Morrissey wrote: > > I'm wondering what kind of documentation we should have that explicitly > > authorizes me to release this software (copyright still held by the company) > > to the public under a DFSG compliant license. IMHO it would be very nice if they could give you a PGP message confirming what the GPL trailer has: Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice -- Clear skies, Justin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Releasing software sponsored by an employer
John Morrissey wrote: > I'm wondering what kind of documentation we should have that explicitly > authorizes me to release this software (copyright still held by the company) > to the public under a DFSG compliant license. The easiest solution in my eyes would be that they give you one copy, with a notice stating that that copy is licensed under the GPL. The GPL then gives you the right to distribute it any way you see fit. Since they are the copyright holder, they are free to apply whatever license to further copies they want to distribute. The GPL-licensed codebase would effectively be an independent fork from then on. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[no subject]
Lewis Jardine wrote: > > 1) Is it legal? > > I can't answer that one (and even if I could, I'd probably be wrong or > overlook something). > If you're planning on using this license for something important, you should > probably > see a contract lawyer with qualifications in French and American law. > Oh yes, of course. But it's enough for me to haven't received any notice of a clearly illegal point, as i'm absolutely not planning an important use for this license. (Btw., just for information, why do you think American law would be involved here?) > 2) Is it free? > > > My French is not wonderful, but if 9 does indeed allow relicensing under the > GPL in all > situations, then I think a document under this license would be DFSG-free: > it's my > understanding that as long as a work has one set of terms that is Free, a it > is considered > to be Free, even if it can additionally be licensed under terms which are not. > > (Example: GPL's section 3c is non-free, as it forbids commercial > redistribution. This > isn't a problem though, because 3a (which is free) can be used instead). > > If it can be GPLed only under certain circumstances, then we have to look at > the > GFDL+permissions license, which I don't think I'm qualified to do. No, it's allowed in all situations. My main concern about this was that such relicensed copies could have been considered not free, but undistributable, as the GPL is supposed to apply to software, not to documents. > > > 3) Do you find some concerns into it? > > Clause 13 appears to be a mandatory upgrade clause: there doesn't seem to be > any way > to license a work under version 1.0 only. Upgrade clausing in the license is > comparatively unusual: it's most often seen in asymmetric licenses like the > NPL, > where it can be used to grant additional permissions to the license author > that > they might have forgotten about. Authors may be concerned that the author of > this > license can arbitrarily relicense their works > > The more common way of doing an upgradable license is to not mention > upgrading in > the license at all, but rather in the copyright statement for the work; this > way > any author that does not want their work to be upgradable can simply use a > different > copyright statement. > > Example: the GPL's suggested statement of '...under the terms of the GNU > General > Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 > of > the License, or (at your option) any later version.', which can be replaced > by > '...under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the > Free > Software Foundation; version 2 of the License only.' > Right. I'll fiw this. Thank you very much! Emmanuel Colbus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Releasing software sponsored by an employer
John Morrissey said on Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 10:55:27AM -0500,: > I'm wondering what kind of documentation we should have that > explicitly authorizes me to release this software (copyright still > held by the company) to the public under a DFSG compliant license. This is answered in the GPL HOTWO - www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html Would be a nice thing if the software is made available on your company's servers / website. -- Mahesh T. Pai That men do not learn much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach us. --Aldous Huxley -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Releasing software sponsored by an employer
As part of my "day job," I'm working on a piece of Debian-specific software. I would like to release it under the GPL and the company is receptive, but we're not sure about the exact mechanism we should use. Obviously, since it was written using their time and resources, they hold copyright on it. They would like to retain ownership, so copyright assignment or a quit claim isn't feasible. (In other words, we don't want to follow the GPL's fictitious Yoyodyne example where the company disclaims copyright.) I'm wondering what kind of documentation we should have that explicitly authorizes me to release this software (copyright still held by the company) to the public under a DFSG compliant license. Thanks! john -- John Morrissey _o/\ __o [EMAIL PROTECTED]_-< \_ / \ < \, www.horde.net/__(_)/_(_)/\___(_) /_(_)__ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#336982: dh-make: Difficulties with the debian/copyright template
On Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 11:42:16AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Justin Pryzby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > Copyright Holder:
> >
> > This has to include a copyright year, also. Please update the
> > boilerplace to indicate that. Also, the copyright holder is not
> > necessarily the author.
>
> Ideally, the copyright file should reproduce the exact copyright
> notice(s) found in the upsteam work itself. If there is no year in the
> original notice (the year of publication ought to be unnecessary in
> all Berne convention jurisdictions), then the maintainer should not
> artificially add one.
Isn't the "upstream author" also useful? Policy 12.5 ("should"):
In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream
sources (if any) were obtained. It should name the original
authors of the package and the Debian maintainer(s) who were
involved with its creation.
> > Copyright Statements:
> >
> >
> > Include the names of all copyright holders here. Also include the
> > range of years during which they made contributions to the package.
>
> I think that dh_make templates are fundamentally the wrong place to
> put such instructions. A packager's task is to dig out the copyright
> notice in the source and reproduce that _verbatim_, with whatever
> warts it has - unless it is actually false. He is _not_ supposed to
> try to do his on sanitizing of the _form_ of the copyright notice.
Agree; as noted, the copyright and license sections should say
something to this effect, and the text should be ammended such that
the "years of contribution" phrase exists only to give an example of
what the package is looking for:
Find the copyright notice in the upstream source, and copy it here
as nearly verbatim as possible. The copyright notice includes the
names of the current copyright holders, and ideally also includes
the range of years during which they hold the copyright.
The copyright holder is not necessarily the same as the upstream
author; (This paragraph simply justifies the existence of both the
"upstream author" section, and the "copyright holders" section).
... (continue rest of section here)
--
Clear skies,
Justin
--
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Re: Bug#238245: Debian website's copyright and license suggestions?
On Sun, Oct 23, 2005 at 03:53:48AM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > > And what would be good license for Debians web pages? (This is about > > content, the scripts used in generation are GNU GPL or otherwise > > freely licensed.) > > Either GNU GPL v. 2 or 2-clause BSD or MIT/Expat. Author's choice, I think. I would encourage MIT-style licenses here, at least for the 'important' pages - I can't see how copyleft gains us any benefits in this particular case, and it would be nice to be able to paste random chunks from the website into random documentation. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#336982: dh-make: Difficulties with the debian/copyright template
Scripsit Justin Pryzby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Copyright Holder: > > This has to include a copyright year, also. Please update the > boilerplace to indicate that. Also, the copyright holder is not > necessarily the author. Ideally, the copyright file should reproduce the exact copyright notice(s) found in the upsteam work itself. If there is no year in the original notice (the year of publication ought to be unnecessary in all Berne convention jurisdictions), then the maintainer should not artificially add one. > Copyright Statements: > > > Include the names of all copyright holders here. Also include the > range of years during which they made contributions to the package. I think that dh_make templates are fundamentally the wrong place to put such instructions. A packager's task is to dig out the copyright notice in the source and reproduce that _verbatim_, with whatever warts it has - unless it is actually false. He is _not_ supposed to try to do his on sanitizing of the _form_ of the copyright notice. -- Henning Makholm "En tapper tinsoldat. En dame i spagat. Du er en lykkelig mand ..." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
