[License-discuss] Copyright holders evolution with MIT license
Hello, I have a question regarding the copyright holders of a software under the MIT license. My case is this one : - Some software was developped under the MIT license in Company1 in 2014 - The software is now (2015) developped by Company2 and will be released under the same MIT license The initial copyright clause is : Copyright (c) 2014 Company1 What should it be in the new release ? Should it include the previous statement as follows: Copyright (c) 2015 Company2 Copyright (c) 2014 Company1 ? I guess there should be a way to keep track of copyright holders (The above copyright notice [...] shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.) but I'm not sure how. Thank you for your attention, Aurelien ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
[License-discuss] Copyright Free Software Foundation, but license not GPL
Hi All, I am a contracts manager at software company, and in addition to doing contracts, I now find myself reviewing the licenses associated with the open source packages my company has acquired. I have become quite familiar with the GPL/LGPL/AGPL suite of licenses, as well as the other, permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, etc. Here's my question: quite frequently, the programmer makes the Free Software Foundation the copyright holder, but then attaches a license that is not in the GPL family. Is that a valid combination? In the case of ncurses, I was able to research and determine that when they assigned their copyright to the Free Software Foundation, the FSF gave ncurses a special carve-out allowing them to use a permissive license. However, all the rest of the open source packages I have come across that assert Copyright Free Software Foundation but are accompanied by non-GPL licenses do not seem to have that sort of special arrangement. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems contradictory to me, and I don't know how to characterize the license in terms of permissive or restrictive. Thank you, Robin ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Copyright Free Software Foundation, but license not GPL
Robin Winning robin.winn...@cyaninc.com writes: I am a contracts manager at software company, and in addition to doing contracts, I now find myself reviewing the licenses associated with the open source packages my company has acquired. I have become quite familiar with the GPL/LGPL/AGPL suite of licenses, as well as the other, permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, etc. Here's my question: quite frequently, the programmer makes the Free Software Foundation the copyright holder, but then attaches a license that is not in the GPL family. Is that a valid combination? It's technically valid, in that the FSF (as a non-profit corporation) can hold copyrightable assets under any licenses it wants. But it's likely usually a mistake, in the sense that the FSF probably has no idea these works are being donated to it under these non-GPL licenses, and because there is usually no need to make the FSF the copyright holder -- except in certain cases where the FSF is actually involved in the development or maintenance of the software, in which case they would have discussed this with the programmer and, in most cases, the FSF would have insisted on one of the GPL family of licenses (though there are some exceptions to that). I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. There are plenty of people who can give you real legal advice if you need; we may be able to help you find those people. In the case of ncurses, I was able to research and determine that when they assigned their copyright to the Free Software Foundation, the FSF gave ncurses a special carve-out allowing them to use a permissive license. However, all the rest of the open source packages I have come across that assert Copyright Free Software Foundation but are accompanied by non-GPL licenses do not seem to have that sort of special arrangement. Nice researching (re ncurses)! Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems contradictory to me, and I don't know how to characterize the license in terms of permissive or restrictive. It's not contradictory, but it's probably often a mistake by a programmer who thinks that putting a license's terms on some software implies that the software's copyright must now be held by whatever entity wrote that license -- which, of course, is not the case and not the norm. -Karl ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Copyright Free Software Foundation, but license not GPL
Robin Winning robin.winn...@cyaninc.com writes: Hi All, I am a contracts manager at software company, and in addition to doing contracts, I now find myself reviewing the licenses associated with the open source packages my company has acquired. I have become quite familiar with the GPL/LGPL/AGPL suite of licenses, as well as the other, permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, etc. Here's my question: quite frequently, the programmer makes the Free Software Foundation the copyright holder, but then attaches a license that is not in the GPL family. Is that a valid combination? It can be, yes. Some packages whose copyrights are held by the FSF are distributed under other licenses. There is actually no intrinsic connection between the GPL and the FSF holding the copyright or vice versa. However, it is not valid for someone to just say Copyright Free Software Foundation on their code without actually having a conversation with us about it (although we appreciate the sentiment). :) We don't actually hold the copyright unless the author has signed an agreement with us transferring it. If you write to ass...@gnu.org with more information about the code, we can confirm whether we actually hold the copyright. -john -- John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: 61A0963B | http://status.fsf.org/johns | http://fsf.org/blogs/RSS Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=8096. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Copyright Free Software Foundation, but license not GPL
Karl, Robin means that the work is dedicated to FSF and placed under a BSD or MIT license. These are compatible with the GPL and FSF is fine with it. Thanks Bruce On 4/17/2013 10:04 AM, Karl Fogel wrote: Robin Winning robin.winn...@cyaninc.com writes: I am a contracts manager at software company, and in addition to doing contracts, I now find myself reviewing the licenses associated with the open source packages my company has acquired. I have become quite familiar with the GPL/LGPL/AGPL suite of licenses, as well as the other, permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, etc. Here's my question: quite frequently, the programmer makes the Free Software Foundation the copyright holder, but then attaches a license that is not in the GPL family. Is that a valid combination? It's technically valid, in that the FSF (as a non-profit corporation) can hold copyrightable assets under any licenses it wants. But it's likely usually a mistake, in the sense that the FSF probably has no idea these works are being donated to it under these non-GPL licenses, and because there is usually no need to make the FSF the copyright holder -- except in certain cases where the FSF is actually involved in the development or maintenance of the software, in which case they would have discussed this with the programmer and, in most cases, the FSF would have insisted on one of the GPL family of licenses (though there are some exceptions to that). I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. There are plenty of people who can give you real legal advice if you need; we may be able to help you find those people. In the case of ncurses, I was able to research and determine that when they assigned their copyright to the Free Software Foundation, the FSF gave ncurses a special carve-out allowing them to use a permissive license. However, all the rest of the open source packages I have come across that assert Copyright Free Software Foundation but are accompanied by non-GPL licenses do not seem to have that sort of special arrangement. Nice researching (re ncurses)! Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems contradictory to me, and I don't know how to characterize the license in terms of permissive or restrictive. It's not contradictory, but it's probably often a mistake by a programmer who thinks that putting a license's terms on some software implies that the software's copyright must now be held by whatever entity wrote that license -- which, of course, is not the case and not the norm. -Karl ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Copyright Free Software Foundation, but license not GPL
Bruce Perens br...@perens.com writes: Karl, Robin means that the work is dedicated to FSF and placed under a BSD or MIT license. These are compatible with the GPL and FSF is fine with it. Er, yes. (Was there something I said that contradicted that?) -K On 4/17/2013 10:04 AM, Karl Fogel wrote: Robin Winning robin.winn...@cyaninc.com writes: I am a contracts manager at software company, and in addition to doing contracts, I now find myself reviewing the licenses associated with the open source packages my company has acquired. I have become quite familiar with the GPL/LGPL/AGPL suite of licenses, as well as the other, permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, etc. Here's my question: quite frequently, the programmer makes the Free Software Foundation the copyright holder, but then attaches a license that is not in the GPL family. Is that a valid combination? It's technically valid, in that the FSF (as a non-profit corporation) can hold copyrightable assets under any licenses it wants. But it's likely usually a mistake, in the sense that the FSF probably has no idea these works are being donated to it under these non-GPL licenses, and because there is usually no need to make the FSF the copyright holder -- except in certain cases where the FSF is actually involved in the development or maintenance of the software, in which case they would have discussed this with the programmer and, in most cases, the FSF would have insisted on one of the GPL family of licenses (though there are some exceptions to that). I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. There are plenty of people who can give you real legal advice if you need; we may be able to help you find those people. In the case of ncurses, I was able to research and determine that when they assigned their copyright to the Free Software Foundation, the FSF gave ncurses a special carve-out allowing them to use a permissive license. However, all the rest of the open source packages I have come across that assert Copyright Free Software Foundation but are accompanied by non-GPL licenses do not seem to have that sort of special arrangement. Nice researching (re ncurses)! Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems contradictory to me, and I don't know how to characterize the license in terms of permissive or restrictive. It's not contradictory, but it's probably often a mistake by a programmer who thinks that putting a license's terms on some software implies that the software's copyright must now be held by whatever entity wrote that license -- which, of course, is not the case and not the norm. -Karl ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Copyright Free Software Foundation, but license not GPL
On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Robin Winning robin.winn...@cyaninc.com wrote: Hi All, I am a contracts manager at software company, and in addition to doing contracts, I now find myself reviewing the licenses associated with the open source packages my company has acquired. I have become quite familiar with the GPL/LGPL/AGPL suite of licenses, as well as the other, permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, etc. Here's my question: quite frequently, the programmer makes the Free Software Foundation the copyright holder, but then attaches a license that is not in the GPL family. Is that a valid combination? In the case of ncurses, I was able to research and determine that when they assigned their copyright to the Free Software Foundation, the FSF gave ncurses a special carve-out allowing them to use a permissive license. However, all the rest of the open source packages I have come across that assert Copyright Free Software Foundation but are accompanied by non-GPL licenses do not seem to have that sort of special arrangement. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems contradictory to me, and I don't know how to characterize the license in terms of permissive or restrictive. Thank you, Robin I would suggest that you contact the FSF with the question, and a specific list of developers, projects, and licenses. The FSF is pretty good about keeping records of actual copyright assignments to them, and can verify which of those they own copyright to, and what license(s) they are under. If the copyright has been properly assigned to the FSF, it is under whatever license the FSF says, no matter what the developer thinks. In most of these cases the developer probably has just borrowed a copyright statement from someone else and has not assigned copyright. At that point, how far deep in the rabbit hole do you want to go? The programmer almost certainly wrote the software in question, and there is a good chance that the programmer is the copyright holder. In that case their license goes, no matter who they think owns that copyright. However depending on the location that the programmer lives, the details of their employment contract, etc, there is a real possibility that the work is a work for hire and is technically owned by a company that likely has no idea that said software exists, or that they have a legal claim to it. This situation is surprisingly common, and almost never causes anyone problems. If it does cause problems, I've never heard of anything happening to anyone other than the unlucky programmer beyond being told that the copyright is not what you thought it was, could you please stop using it. In the bizarre case where someone wanted to pursue it farther, you've got a pretty solid defense for past infringements because you were going on your reasonable belief about the license based on what you were told. I have been told in the past that the FSF is very aware of this potential can of worms, and that is why they keep careful records to make sure that they actually own the copyrights that they think they own. IANAL and TINLA. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Copyright Free Software Foundation, but license not GPL
Thank you very much for your cogent responses and your insider insight. //Robin On Apr 17, 2013, at 10:18 AM, Bruce Perens br...@perens.com wrote: On 4/17/2013 10:12 AM, Karl Fogel wrote: Bruce Perens br...@perens.com writes: Karl, Robin means that the work is dedicated to FSF and placed under a BSD or MIT license. These are compatible with the GPL and FSF is fine with it. Er, yes. (Was there something I said that contradicted that?) projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss Just that Robin doesn't know as much about this, and it's really easy to confuse rather than enlighten :-) Robin, FSF's main concern is that works meet their Four Freedoms, which the permissive licenses would. They have a secondary goal of using reciprocal licensing as a strategy to increase the amount of good free software, but it is not my understanding that they would reject a work for being permissive. Of course, with FSF holding the copyright they can, theoretically, determine the license. However, they are much less likely to do this as long as there is still an active developer running the project and the license used meets the four freedoms. Richard Stallman knows through long experience that pushing on developers about licensing can get them really annoyed, and the FSF's director is more empathic than Richard and thus unlikely to do that either. A more modern way for a project to donate than to assign to FSF would be to become a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. This organization is very clearly on the side of Free Software but leaves the control of the project in the developer's hands. Thanks Bruce ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: license and copyright
On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 10:02:32AM +0200, Ferdinando Ametrano ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Hi all I will announce a new open source project in a few days, but I still have a few questions for which I would like to receive some help. I am especially confused about copyright stuff. 1) I've chosen a XFree86-style licence (or is it called XConsortium/MIT style licence?), that is a BSD style licence without the advertising clause. I append a prototype of this licence at the end of this message. Since the license itself has to be copyrighted, my question is: who should copyright it? Is it me? This is itself an interesting question -- copyright in legal documents. There's an argument that legal documents are inherently functional, and/or when they appear in court or legal procedings, they become part of the public record. Arguments exist for both sides of this argument. It's not clear to me that you can, or need to, secure copyright on the license itself. However, adding a copyright line probably won't hurt -- though it doesn't carry much legal import in the US and most Berne signatory countries either. 2) I and my colleagues will be providing the initial code base to the project. Should we have a copyright line in each file? This is a good project management practice, falling largely outside the realm of copyright for reasons similar to above. You have copyright in your own works of original authorship. Noting same aids in bookkeeping. 3) What about later changes of existing (copyrighted) files? Should every developer copyright his modification? Again, to a large extent, a project management issue, though your license allows addition of additional terms to the original license. Legal implications may exist. Generally, contributing authors add a copyright notice to files they've modified. Some projects use a seperate CONTRIBUTORS or similar file. Wouldn't this approach turn every file into a mess of copyright lines? This might be seen as the sign of a successful project. It's one of those problems that's a sign of success. thanks for you help ciao -- Nando -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Opensales, Inc.http://www.opensales.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/http://www.kuro5hin.org GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595 DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0 PGP signature
Re: license and copyright
On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Ferdinando Ametrano wrote: 1) I've chosen a XFree86-style licence (or is it called XConsortium/MIT style licence?), that is a BSD style licence without the advertising clause. I append a prototype of this licence at the end of this message. Since the license itself has to be copyrighted, my question is: who should copyright it? Is it me? It's properly a MIT style license. The BSD license is "same same but different". The license is most likely copyrighted, but there is no need to attribute the license copyright holder for its use. The vast common use is simply to include the body of the license in the source code files or reference a copy of it included with the package. Copyright your own code. Even though the license will say "Copyright (c) 2000 Ferdinando Ametrano", it is the code that is yours and not the license. 2) I and my colleagues will be providing the initial code base to the project. Should we have a copyright line in each file? Each separate file should have a copyright line. It isn't necessary but it is good practice. If someone uses only one file of yours for their own project, it helps that it has a copyright line. I was going to use a code snippet that I had found in one of my programs, but by the time I got around to using it I had forgotten where I found it, or even which license it was under. It's a good idea to have a single copyright holder for the work. If there are only a few core developers, then just include all their names in all copyright lines. If there are more than this, it may be wise to create a legal "umbrella" organization of some kind, like Apache or KDE. This prevents arguments over whose code is whose, as all the code belongs to the copyright holder unless specifically noted. (not that it makes a huge difference with MIT licensed code though) 3) What about later changes of existing (copyrighted) files? Should every developer copyright his modification? From what I recall, and I may be wrong, patches and modification of less than ten lines or so can be included under the main copyright. Larger submissions are copyrighted by their submitters. You certainly don't want someone else holding copyright to the "free foo" line that you forgot to include :-) As a *suggestion* only, you could make a policy that states all submissions for the "official software" that add, remove or modify ten lines or less will automatically fall under the main copyright, and that all submissions larger than that need to be either restricted to a single file, or have the copyright explicitely assigned to the copyright holder. Of course you still need to attribute your submitters! This is only common courtesy. Another approach is to segregate the copyright lines to the function headers, where they will not inpinge upon the code readability, but still be contiguous with the code they belong to. This is project management policy, and it needs to be figured out before the project starts. But since it has already started, then it needs deciding before it gets released. Wouldn't this approach turn every file into a mess of copyright lines? In practice, not really. I see lots of attribution and copyright lines, but they are usually gathered all together in one place. -- David Johnson ___ http://www.usermode.org
