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[James Blackwell]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 04:06:47PM -0600, John A Meinel wrote:
> Jan Hudec wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 15:32:20 -0600, John A Meinel wrote:
> >> Erik Bågfors wrote:
> >>> 2006/2/24, Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net>:
> >>>> Lets talk about how the top of a source file should look, so we can all
> >>>> agree that we've agreed :).
> >>>>
> >>>> # Copyright (C) 2006 by Canonical Ltd
> >>> Should all source be copyright to Canonical, does that mean that if we
> >>> have contributed anything, we have to sign copyright over?
> >>>
> >>> /Erik
> >> I would like to hear what Canonical has to say about this.
> >>
> >> I realize it is easier if one entity owns all of the copyrights, not to
> >> say people don't own their own work, just that more than one group can
> >> have the right to copy. Having a unified group own everything means that
> >> if there were ever a need to change the license (like the upcoming
> >> possible move to GPL v3), it is nearly impossible without having a
> >> unified group.
> > 
> > As for move to GPL v3, bzr is licenced as 'GPL v2 or, at your option, any
> > later version'. Therefore I think (IANAL) anyone can change it to GPL v3 or,
> > at your option, any later version' in any particular copy and it will then
> > apply to all versions derived from that copy (but not to versions derived
> > from earlier copies, which it won't anyway, since you can't change the
> > licensing retroactively).
> > 
> >> I suppose that might be one reason to keep Authors, though. Since it is
> >> kind of a "and these people have rights to this code too."
> > 
> > For one think I vaguely recall GPL actually requires it (though I am not
> > going to look it up now - maybe it's FSF or some guidelines to require that).
> > 
> 
> I'm sure GPL doesn't require it, because the Linux kernel is GPL v2
> only, and everyone owns their own code. Which is why the kernel will
> have little to no chance of ever becoming v3.

There's more reasons than that, I'm afraid. Linus seems to be dead set
against it.
  
> Anyway, I think it is a good guideline. I would just like to hear
> Canonical's stance. (I would be more comfortable giving copyright to FSF
> than Canonical, but I'm okay with Canonical having it). But I do think
> Canonical is more likely to turn something closed source than FSF would
> be. Doesn't mean it is likely, just more likely than the FSF.

I looked into this a while back. Nobody I talked to knew of any
plans to do what I considered to be bad things. I couldn't find any
indications of ulterior motives either. I have, however, seen good signs.

The company has been looking into turning the parts of the Bazaar-1.x
codebase that it owns over to the Free Software Foundation to help gnuarch
move from gplv2 to gplv2+. 

This leaves me to believe that the company is trying to avoid getting into
a similiar situation again by having the copyright aggregated so that if
there is a license problem, that its in a position to fix it.


-- 
My home page:   <a href="http://jblack.linuxguru.net">James Blackwell</a>
Gnupg 06357400  F-print AAE4 8C76 58DA 5902 761D  247A 8A55 DA73 0635 7400
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