Re: Re: Proposed COPYRIGHT file changes to resolve "PD" issue

[Alba Pompeo <albapompeo@gmail.com>]

Was a resolution reached?


On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 2:56 PM, George Kulakowski
<kulakowski@google.com> wrote:
> Hi Rich,
>
> rofl0r <retnyg@gmx.net> is the only other contributor we found to have made
> any changes to those files.
>
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 1:35 PM Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 12:57:06PM -0700, Christopher Lane wrote:
>> > Rich,
>> >
>> > Our lawyers just got back to me: looks good to us.  Thanks so much for
>> > all
>> > the time spent on this.
>>
>> At one point you said you would check the list of contributors you
>> wanted to get clarification from. Does the list I put in the proposed
>> patch look complete to you? I tried to include port contributors who
>> wrote significant new stuff for these files but not anyone who just
>> made minor patches to existing files or just copied existing files
>> with minimal/no changes from an existing port.
>>
>> Rich
>>
>>
>> > On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 9:14 PM, Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > > After the previous discussions on the list, I spoke with one of
>> > > Google's lawyers on the phone. It's taken me a while to follow up
>> > > after that because I was away at ELC last week, but I think we have a
>> > > good resolution as long as there are no objections.
>> > >
>> > > Where I was coming from was not wanting license crap to be an obstacle
>> > > to adoption of musl (after all, that's why I relicensed from LGPL to
>> > > MIT in the first place) but also not wanting to scrub my/our belief
>> > > that some of these files are non-copyrightable or retroactively claim
>> > > ownership of something we can't own.
>> > >
>> > > Where they were coming from was a context of dealing with courts
>> > > wrongly (this is my opinion I'm injecting here) deeming interfaces to
>> > > be copyrightable, and having to spend ridiculously disproportionate
>> > > effort to determine if the license actually gives them permission to
>> > > use all the code.
>> > >
>> > > While I don't really agree that they actually have cause for concern
>> > > in musl's case, I do agree that the simple fact that the current text
>> > > is causing concern means there's something wrong with it. A license
>> > > should not make you have to stop and think about whether you can
>> > > actually use the software, and certainly shouldn't necessitate 60+
>> > > message mailing list threads.
>> > >
>> > > The proposal we reached on the phone call was that I would try
>> > > improving the previous patch to no longer make a statement about the
>> > > copyrightability of the files in question, but to note that we
>> > > expressed such a belief in the past. No new statement that we _do_
>> > > hold copyright over these files is made, but the grants of permission
>> > > are made unconditionally (i.e. without any conditions like "if these
>> > > files are found to be subject to copyright...").
>> > >
>> > > How does this sound? See the attached patch for the specific wording
>> > > proposed and let me know if you have constructive ideas for improving
>> > > it. On our side, it's really the agreement of the contributors of the
>> > > affected code (I have a draft list of them in the patch) that matters,
>> > > but I'd welcome input from others too. Also, the patch itself has not
>> > > been run by Google's side yet -- I'm doing this all in the open -- so
>> > > there still may be further feedback/input from their side.
>> > >
>> > > Rich
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > kthxbai
>> > :wq