Thanks for the explanation Paul. Very much appreciated.<br><br>My apologies for prolonging this thread with one more question. In terms of coding style, does it make sense to have the copyright notices for each change in the code as this example? Should copyright notices from previous modifications ever be removed? Please point me at the style guidelines if this is already defined. Thanks again.<br>
<br>Andrew<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 16 July 2010 11:22, Paul Ramsey <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pramsey@opengeo.org">pramsey@opengeo.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
They can't withdraw rights to use it, they've licensed it under the<br>
LGPL. Once it's out, it's out. Multi-copyright projects are all over<br>
the place, it's not a big deal. The only thing copyright assignment<br>
gets you is the ability to change the license of future releases of<br>
the code. (The old releases would remain under the previous license<br>
regime.) Why do you suppose MySQL AB "allows" Drizzle and MariaDB to<br>
go ahead and compete with them, using code that is entirely copyright<br>
MySQL AB (now owned by Oracle)? Because they don't have any choice --<br>
copyright doesn't give them the ability to retroactively relicense the<br>
old work.<br>
<br>
Blah blah, license mathers, blah blah. :) Suffice to say, I've<br>
investigated this in some detail, since PostgreSQL is multi-copyright<br>
(there is no copyright assignment, and despite the headers saying "(c)<br>
PostgreSQL Global Development Group" the core group is cognizant that<br>
in fact the copyright vests in the people who wrote it, since the<br>
"PGDG" does not *exist*, legally, anywhere in the world. PostGIS, also<br>
multi-copyright. Linux is also multi-copyright (see attached file,<br>
which is from "grep -i "copyright" *.c > ~/linux.drivers.net.txt").<br>
<br>
So, if the new code is (c) Safe Software, that's fine.<br>
<br>
Live in freedom and happiness,<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Paul<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:53 AM, Andrew Ross <<a href="mailto:grof@rogers.com">grof@rogers.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Multi-people joint copyright with an organization like OSGeo also owning<br>
> joint copyright is great and a very common model in open source. It doesn't<br>
> seem that this is the case for geos though. A liberal license (such as LGPL)<br>
> helps of course as it states very generous rights to use the source. My<br>
> concern is what prevents a contributor from withdrawing the rights to use<br>
> their source code on a whim?<br>
><br>
> On 16 July 2010 04:56, strk <<a href="mailto:strk@keybit.net">strk@keybit.net</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 07:53:33PM -0400, Andrew Ross wrote:<br>
>> > Hi Tom, All<br>
>> ><br>
>> > Saw the copyright notice in the change. Copyright for geos seems to be<br>
>> > held<br>
>> > by a number of people and organizations. That seems legally murky to me<br>
>> > but<br>
>> > I am not a lawyer. Has this been discussed previously?<br>
>><br>
>> Not that I know about. I'm personally happy with multi-people copyright.<br>
>><br>
>> --strk;<br>
>><br>
>> () Free GIS & Flash consultant/developer<br>
>> /\ <a href="http://strk.keybit.net/services.html" target="_blank">http://strk.keybit.net/services.html</a><br>
><br>
><br>
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><br>
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