[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Copyright issues

[Dan Scott]

On 19/01/2008, Scott McKellar <mck9 at swbell.net> wrote:
> No code here -- this post is about legal issues.

Hey Scott:

This is a timely post for several reasons. We have OpenSRF 1.0 close
to being ready to roll out the door, so we should ensure that all
license headers and copyright statements should be taken care of
before it's released (I think I mentioned that back when Mike asked
what was left on the to-do list for OpenSRF 1.0 - ah yes,
http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-dev/2007-December/002184.html).

We also have Evergreen 1.4 approaching, and it would make sense to
clean up our licensing and copyright act there as well.

Also, as you mentioned, it's 2008 now, so we'll want date ranges shown
for anything created more than a year ago.

Copyright <whoever> 2006-2008

As you noted, most of the files haven't even been updated to show 2007
yet. This is an ideal job for a script.

All of the files that originated from Evergreen should have GPL
headers; the GPL license itself includes very explicit instructions on
how to apply the headers in "How to apply these terms to your new
programs" at  http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html for GPL
v3 and http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html for GPL
v2. Again, this would be an ideal job for a script.

Like you, most of my contributions have been incremental improvements
that wouldn't warrant an assertion of copyright. In a few patches and
commits where I have provided something substantial (XML schema files,
i18n tools), however, I have asserted copyright and included a GPL v2
header. My understanding of the project copyright policy is that
Evergreen wants the individual contributors to retain copyright,
rather than assigning their copyright to the project.

As an aside, the assertion that Linus couldn't relicense Linux under
GPL v3 is debatable, as the GPL v2 license includes the clause: "you
can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version". Still, the polite thing to do would be to ask all of the
contributors if they approve the use of the GPL v3 for future
contributions; otherwise, in a worst case scenario, it would have to
be available under GPL v2 and GPL v3. Not a horrible scenario.

I've been through a similar discussion with two other projects I'm
involved in recently. While many people don't really care about the
issues (to the point of pretending that the issues aren't real), I
agree with you that they are important and that Evergreen's copyright
and licensing policy needs to be explicit (probably an addition to
http://open-ils.org/documentation/contributing.html) and that the
policy should then be rigorously applied.

For what it's worth on the GPL v2 / v3 front, I'm happy for my code to
be licensed under either GPL v2 or GPL v3. One of the advantages to
GPL v3 is that it is compatible with the Apache License, whereas GPL
v2 is not (in the view of FSF, at least).

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University