Perhaps it is time to consider voluntary surrender of copyright by
individuals to an "Ethereal foundation" of some sort. This would mean
that as people contribute, the copyright is not held by the individual,
but rather the group.
By doing this, we can make changes to the license (by majority vote),
and not have to track down every individual who has made an addition to
the product since it's inception.
Of course, contributors would still get credit (through the AUTHORS
file, as well as putting their name in the files they create). However,
the copyright would be held by the group.
I faced the same issue with OpenSSL a couple of weeks ago. I would need
to get consent from every author in order to change the license to allow
for inclusion of the OpenSSL library. This problem is only going to get
worse as time goes on and the number of contributors continues to
increase.
It's a radical change, but for larger projects it's not uncommon.
Thoughts?
Devin
On Thu, 2002-11-21 at 10:53, Gerald Combs wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Brad Hards wrote:
>
> > 1. This is a change to the existing license, and potentially needs to be
> > approved by all copyright holders. What happens if someone says no?
>
> There are just under 250 people listed in the AUTHORS file at the present
> time. If any of them explicitly denies permission for a
> differently-licensed release of Ethereal (or if we simply can't reach
> them), we can't include their code under the modified license.
>
>
> > 2. Whether alternatives (such as the patent holders granting a restricted
> > patent license for use of techniques potentially covered by patent) are
> > compatible with the current license.
>
> The second-to-last paragraph in the preamble of the GPL takes an
> all-or-nothing stance toward patents; e.g. you can't exempt a patent for
> Ethereal while enforcing it for the Hairdini.
>
>
> > 3. Whether the plug-in API is sufficiently well defined (in a documentation
> > sense, and also in a code stability sense) that this technique is
> > practicable.
>
> It may not be. The most complete documentation is in doc/README.plugins.
> I'd imagine it would have to be changed to a more formal API specification
> before we could reference it from a license. We may also want to create a
> document that's separate from the Ethereal distribution. Otherwise,
> someone could subvert the intent of the extended license simply by
> modifiying the API spec.
>
>
> I'm in support of the proposed license change. Aside from the patent
> issue, it would allow the inclusion of Andreas' H.323 code with the main
> distribution.
>
>
> > Brad
> >
> > - --
> > http://linux.conf.au. 22-25Jan2003. Perth, Aust. I'm registered. Are you?
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> >
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> >
>
>
>
>
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--
Devin Heitmueller
Senior Software Engineer
Netilla Networks Inc