[En-Nut-Discussion] RFC: Copyright of trivial code

[Bernd Walter]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:10:31AM +0100, Harald Kipp wrote:
> Hi Ulrich,
> 
> On 3/21/2011 10:01 PM, Ulrich Prinz wrote:
> 
> >> Btw. many of these simple files had been created exclusively by me.
> >> Ulrich had concerns, that I may change copyrights without getting the
> >> original author involved. I have no intention to do so. On the other
> >> hand, as the original author I'm free to re-release the same files at
> >> any time under any license I wish.
> 
> ...
> 
> > Let's say you are mentioned as the original author of a file and I
> > modified 90% of it at a time where the license matches my needs. Now you
> > claim your original creator rights and modify the license that renders
> > the file unusable for me...
> 
> This happens when Germans discuss legal issues in a foreign language. 
> ;-) Obviously my wording was wrong and introduced some confusion.
> 
> I meant original in the sense of authentic or genuine, _not_ in the 
> sense of first or initial.
> 
> If you create a derived work by adding remarkable parts to my initial 
> work, the derived work deserves copyright as well. In this case the work 
> is published under yours and my copyright.

Exactly and the new code can be licensed in (almost) any given flavour.
Unlike with the GPL, where the 90% author requires that additions are also
GPL licensed or he doesn't allow you to use his 90%.

> I'm still able to release the initial version under any other license at 
> my will, but both of us must agree to release the derived work under a 
> different license.
> 
> 
> > The FSF requests to keep your GPL code available for three years after
> > _last_ product using that code left your factory. So lets say, the
> > product was in production for three years. Now somewhere in that time of
> > six years somebody changed the license in a file to GPL and now comes to
> > the idea to spend him and the FSF some money.
> 
> Precisely: You cannot _change_ BSD licensed code to any other license. 
> The authors can release the code under a different license, but that 
> will not remove the BSD license from code, that had been published under 
> BSDL.
> 
> Let's assume, that the majority of the authors of Nut/OS decide to 
> continue their work under GPL. In that case they are able to replace all 
> copyright notices of all files of which they hold the _exclusive_ copyright.

In fact they can't replace the license:
 * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
 *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Only original author can decide to distribute with an additional exclusive
GPL license.
It doesn't matter what the majority says - they can't decide to replace
other authors copyright statement.
They can add a GPL statement additionaly to cover their own additions.

> Let's further assume, that one file contains two important lines of 
> genuine work done by you and that you refuse to release this under GPL. 
> Btw. this is independent from what's stated in the copyright text. The 
> CVS/SVN commit may sufficiently prove, that it's your work. In this case 
> the file cannot be moved to GPL, because that would violate the BSDL of 
> your code. The whole file must remain BSD licensed code, unless your 
> contribution is removed.

Right - the old code remains BSD forever.
But if an individual author is named as a copyright holder and this
author doesn't agree to remove this copyright the whole BSD license
statement must stay intact.
BSD licensed code can be used inside GPL code with the BSD license to
keep the original codelines under protection and the viral behavour
of the GPL to include everything.
This effectively means that part of the code is dual licened.
And this also means that the BSD statement must be keep unless all
authors agree.
If all authors agree to remove the BSD license - they additionaly
hand out the right to violate paragraph 1 in this given case - then
the old license for the old code still remains, although it's not
mentioned in the new code.
In the same way the UCB later agreed to remove the advertisement clause
from their license.

> Last not least, all authors and users, who refuse to follow this move, 
> may create a fork right before that change and continue development 
> under BSDL.
> 
> As you can see, you are quite safe. At least in that license changes 
> will not provide unforeseen surprises.

Unfortunately it can in case you depend on further development.
I don't see this risk with Nut/OS, sinse we all agree to allow business
usecases.
In the FreeBSD world have faced the problem with GCC, which changed from GPL2
to GPL3 - the GPL allows code to be upgraded to a newer GPL version.
GPL3 however isn't considered to be compatible with the FreeBSD usecase so
we stay with an old GCC version, which is still GPL2 of course.
Moreover we can't get every bugfix, because some bugfixes are distributed
GPL3 only.

-- 
B.Walter <bernd at bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de
Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.