csound manual

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 04:16:03PM -0400, Felipe Sateler wrote:
>On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 15:54, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 03:04:32PM -0400, Felipe Sateler wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 14:57, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 02:11:39PM -0400, Felipe Sateler wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 14:01, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> If all contributions not originating from MIT have been tracked using
>>>>>> CVS at SourceForge, it should be possible to get a list of account names
>>>>>> from there, to at least know how many unknown contributors we are talking
>>>>>> about.  If this is a large task, it might make sense to first ask
>>>>>> debian-devel if such info is legally relevant or not.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have a list of commiters, and that list is contained in the list I
>>>>> have in my local copy of debian/copyright. However, a large number of
>>>>> contributions are made without commit access (for example, I might write to
>>>>> the mailing list proposing some wording for a certain opcode). Some of them
>>>>> have a "thanks to" note, but I think not all of them do.
>>>>
>>>> Well, I believe it was you who insisted on treating all contributors as
>>>> copyright holders. ;-)
>>>>
>>>> What makes sense to me is that we only deal with explicitly claimed
>>>> copyright holders and their properly licensed code.  Yes, at least in the
>>>> danish jurisdiction there is an implicit ownership as well, but what I
>>>> suggest (and I believe that is the common approach in Debian) is to ignore
>>>> implicit ownership - and if that means some of the code lack an owner who
>>>> licensed the code to us then too bad: then we choose to not redistribute
>>>> that piece of code.
>>>>
>>>> ...something along that I would expect you to get as response too if/when
>>>> asking debian-legal at .
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Problem here - if I understand you correctly - is that we have noone
>>>> claiming to be a copyright holder generally for the CSound manual.
>>>>
>>>> What makes most sense to me is actually to tell upstream that we cannot
>>>> redistribute their manual without them explicitly stating a) who are the
>>>> copyright holders (which might not be the same as those who wrote it - some
>>>> contributors might have chosen to transfer ownership) and b) how each and
>>>> every one of those copyright holders have licensed their contributions.
>>>
>>> If this was common practice in debian, we would be left without the linux
>>> kernel.
>>
>> No.  "common practice" means "what is most often done", not "what is always
>> done".
>
>Can you cite examples of "common practice"? I cited the linux kernel
>because its the most obvious one.

You did not cite the Linux kernel, you just claimed that the Linux 
kernel did not fit the scheme I described.

And no, I also simply claim that I believe that scheme to be common 
practice.  I cannot cite e.g. sections of Debian Policy or similar.

Feel free to disagree with me.


>> Oh, and I do not mean to say that upstream must explicitly list each 
>> and every copyright holder.  Some claim that "this team holds 
>> copyright, with this license."  I just meant (in that last sentence 
>> above) to cover the possible case of "ah, well, most files are 
>> licensed like this, so we simply assume that the rest are licensed 
>> similarly, even if the copyright holders are someone else).
>
>Hmm, there is no explicit copyright claim... I'll see what upstream
>says to that.
>
>>
>>
>>>>>> Do we have access to any documents upstream which supports the 
>>>>>> claim that all contributions have been made under the GFDL?
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think so. However, if the code is released under a certain 
>>>>> license, and I contribute a patch, I think it is implicit that the 
>>>>> code is licensed under the same license as the project.
>>>>
>>>> I believe that to be a false assumption.
>>>
>>> I believe common practice in debian has been to trust upstream when 
>>> it comes to licensing. We cannot provide a full auditory of the 
>>> code's licensing status, not without investing inordinate amounts of 
>>> time and effort, and possibly even money.
>>
>> I agree.
>>
>> And I see no conflict between this and what I described above.  I 
>> suspect that you do, since you mention it here.  Care to elaborate?
>
>If upstream tells me the work is GFDL'ed, then I have no reason to
>believe some parts of it are not GFDL, unless explicitly stated. What
>we are doing here is precisely debating whether the manual is in fact
>GFDL.

Do upstream state that the complete work is GFDL?  Then let's quote 
verbatim that statement.


  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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