bazaar-ng copyright policy

[Aaron Bentley]

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Martin Pool wrote:
| Hi,
|
| It has been proposed that we should keep all of the bazaar-ng code
| copyright by a single entity, as is done by Python, Zope and Apache.
| That entity will be Canonical Ltd, which has committed to make the
| project always remain free.  This allows actions down the track such as
| adding licence exceptions to link to other code or legal defense without
| having to chase down all the original authors.  To effect this we will
| need to ask for a copyright assignment note in gpg-signed email with
| nontrivial patches (say >15 lines).  Does this sound reasonable?

I'm willing to assign my copyright to Canonical.

I'm not sure I see the value in having license exceptions.  I would want
everyone to have equal rights wrt the code.  But I do see value in being
able to change the license later, as Mozilla and Wine have done.

I don't see why legal defence requires a single entity.  In fact, as I
understand it, gpl-violations.org has benefitted from the fact that
there's no single entity controlling Linux.  Instead of having to get
The Linux Consortium to commit to a GPL lawsuit, they only have to get a
single Linux contributor involved.

Oh, and I assume that we can just do the copyright thing once, and not
have to assign copyright every time we submit a nontrivial patch.

Aaron
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