Re: [reSIProcate] copyright over reSIProcate...

[Matthias Moetje <moetje@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I also would object moving to a GPL license…

 

Matthias Moetje

 

From: resiprocate-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:resiprocate-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Godin
Sent: Montag, 14. Mai 2012 15:24
To: Daniel Pocock
Cc: resiprocate-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; gjasny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [reSIProcate] copyright over reSIProcate...

 

There has been plenty of talk in the past about moving to a BSD-3 clause so that we can be GPL compatible and use a more standard software license than Vovida.  From what I remember the Vovida license had some compatibility issues with GPL (it's likely due to the 4th clause).  I believe what was previously discussed was that every committer/author would need to be contacted and give their permission to switch the license blocks - and no one has taken this on yet.  I believe that dropping the 4th clause of the Vovida block would equate to the same thing.  I'm not sure how many companies would be involved in this permission gathering work as well (ie. Purplecomm, Jasomi, CounterPath, etc...).   I've been contributing new project code under the new BSD 3-clause, in anticipation we might eventually get the entire project move to BSD 3-clause.  I know many of the original authors would support this.

 

I'm OK with the generalization of 'author' in clause 3 for any work's I've committed, and I can't see anyone disagreeing to this.

 

I have no interest in moving to a GPL license.

 

Scott

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Daniel Pocock <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

For the Debian package, and likely for other purposes, it is important
to do an audit of the copyright contributions and respective license terms

I've had a go at this - but I'd really like to make sure I haven't
missed anyone, so please speak up if I have.

It appears that the VOCAL license is really just the BSD license with:

- the University name replaced with Vovida
- an extra clause (4) reinforcing the restriction on use of the name
Vovida/VOCAL

Other contributors (myself, SIP Spectrum, Plantronics and possibly
others) appear to have granted identical license terms except:

- using their own names within the place of Vovida
- not always adding the fourth clause (which appears to just restate the
third clause of the BSD license anyway)

This brings me to raise a few queries:

a) could we generalise the license text, while retaining individual
copyright?  E.g.:

  Copyright (c) 2012 <YOUR NAME HERE>
   ...
     3. Neither the name of the author nor the names of contributors
     may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
     without specific prior written permission.

Notice it says `the author' rather than repeating the author's name from
the copyright at the top.  Although this change is trivial, if we don't
do it, we technically have different licenses for different source files.

b) can we drop clause (4) from the Vovida license?

c) what is the status of Vovida anyway?  Is this company still
registered, did the copyright become the property of the new owners of
the company, for example, and should the copyright notices be updated?

d) Has there been any discussion about granting the rights to some
non-profit association, rather than having bits of code each copyrighted
by individual contributors?  I'm not necessarily advocating this
approach, but some projects have gone that way.

e) do any active contributors feel they would prefer to put their future
contributions under GPL2 or GPL3 terms?  This does not in any way
undermine the rights of previous contributors or existing users of the
previous releases of the stack.  It would mean that anyone using a
future release of the stack would be obliged to open source any code
they write linking to the stack.

Here is a link to the copyright summary for Debian:

http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/resiprocate.git;a=blob_plain;f=debian/copyright;hb=HEAD


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