file headers

Martin Pool mbp at sourcefrog.net
Sat Feb 25 00:29:57 GMT 2006


On 24 Feb 2006, John A Meinel <john at arbash-meinel.com> 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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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."

Yes, we would like for Canonical to own the copyrights so that there is
one person who can speak for it.  One example is that although the
copyrights can say "GPLv2 or later", we might want to relicence some
parts in the future under say the Python Standard Licence so that they
can go into the python distribution.

(In fact the Python profiler is in a difficult situation because the
author can't be contacted.)

Another reason to have it is that Canonical would like to offer patent
indemnity to contributors and be in a position to defend any problems
that may arise.

We did have a couple of list threads about this and had (iirc) fairly
good agreement from people who were around at the time but I haven't
followed up enough.  The copyright assignment should be visible at
http://bazaar-ng.org/copyright/

-- 
Martin




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