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

[George Kulakowski <kulakowski@google.com>]

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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
>

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