(probably only last paragraph is interesting if you’re not Glenn
Glenn Maynard wrote:
You don’t have to assert copyright to hold copyright; I’m pretty sure
failure to list yourself in the © does not void your copyright (though
I believe it used to). (TINLA, etc.)
As I understand (so conjecture as the GPL/LGPL has no precedents),
if you contribute work the © assignment in the file stands as the
copyright control… this is how people can submit minor enhancements
and bug-fixes to FSF-owned software and the FSF still holds copyright on
the work without an explicit reassignment of copyright. (i.e.
“Everything in this file belongs to me unless it says so otherwise at
some location” …which is part of the indemnification problem.)
If you contribute significant work in a separate (or well-defined
area of a) file, that work can be © by the contributor. However, not
having a © notice is in violation of the LGPL, which must be able to
eat the other licenses. Looking through the files, I didn’t find any
that did not have a © notice… but I didn’t manually look at each,
just a ‘find’ and some grepping.
Work contributed by others are freed from copyright controll except
for an obsolete linux thread file that has the © assigned to the FSF,
but it can probably be removed as it looks like it was needed for
versions of gcc prior to v2.
You’re claiming contributed work is in the public domain?
Some of it is public domain, like:
----------snip-----------
/* File “FastTimes.c” - Original code by Matt Slot /
/ Created 4/24/99 - This file is hereby placed in the public domain
----------snip-----------
Some other files are under licenses that free the owner from copyright
control (i.e. you can relicense my code however you want), like:
----------snip------------
/* $Xorg: panoramiXext.h,v 1.4 2000/08/18 04:05:45 coskrey Exp $ /
/****************************************************************
Copyright © 1991, 1997 Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard,
Massachusetts. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any
person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.
----------snip-------------
There’s always the possibility of creating a clean “sister” library,
say, for embedded device development, that could be compatible with
relevant SDL modules, but under a license more compatible with embedded
platforms. If Sam isn’t either interested or able to update the
license, this is a direction I’m leaning (eSDL?).
Any thoughts?