On Jan 12, 2:15 pm, Hyrum K Wright <[email protected]> wrote: > 2012/1/12 Jonas Borgström <[email protected]>: > ... > > > Yes that's correct, there's no formal CLA or any formal policy describing > > how code contributions are handled. > > What we do have is that all source files have a > > "Copyright XXXX-YYYY Edgewall Software" line in the license header. In > > addition to that many files also have similar lines for individual > > developers. > > > I'm not a lawyer so I don't really know if this means that Edgewall Software > > holds full or partial copyright of the source code. > > In most jurisdictions, unless contributors have expresses granted > copyright of their contributions to Edgewall, they still hold > copyright over the code, and that header is inaccurate. Edgewall (or > the SFC, or $FOO) may still have copyright over an entire > distribution, but the individual contributions remain the property of > their authors. > > In theory, these contributions could even have separate licenses, > which opens up a whole other set of issues. Clearing up such > ambiguity is one fo the primary purposes of having a CLA. In practice > though, it is understood that contributions to a file have been made > under the license that file is under. (With the GPL, this is > required, and is explicitly in the license. With the BSD and friends, > not so much.)
That seems to be in line with my understanding too. 1) There has been an implicit understanding in the project among contributors and anyone helping out with tickets and patches, that the result will be BSD licensed. AFAIK there has never been a complaint or discussion about that to suggest otherwise. Anything known to have other licenses, such as the Mercurial plugin, has been kept external to the main Trac code. We have certainly never accepted any contribution that has explicitly claimed a different license. I think it is fair assumption to claim that all of the Trac source code is BSD licensed, and I don't see that anyone will challenge that. 2) I have touched many files in my work with Trac, but other than adding my name to the AUTHORS file I have never bothered to "claim" any copyright in individual files. But, as Hyrum correctly states, I still hold the copyright of my changes even though my name does not appear in files. I have no reason or incentive to hold such a copyright to a body of work built as part of a team building software for public availability, and as such I have 'implicitly' transferred my copyright to Edgewall all along. However, I will have no problem making an explicit grant of transfer - for past, present and future - to whatever organisation deemed appropriate to manage the Trac project intellectual property (IP). 3) Jonas, I suppose if we transferred the IP elsewhere we should also handle the other Trac dependencies/dependents at the same time - Genshi, Babel, Bitten in particular. It widens the scope a little, but should still be quite manageable. :::simon https://www.coderesort.com http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/osimons -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Trac Development" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/trac-dev?hl=en.
