Re: The definition of PGDG

"Greg Sabino Mullane" <greg@turnstep.com> writes:

> Simon Riggs wrote:
>> The main reason is that Slony is Copyrighted PGDG, so we
>> own the code and it is of course BSD licenced.
>
> As an aside, how can copyright be assigned to a non-defined
> group (a concept really, as near as I can tell). Is the PGDG
> actually defined anywhere yet? If not, anyone want to take
> a stab at it?

As a non-lawyer I don't think this is an issue. The group exists, it's just
that it's (merely) a group of individual people. Ie, the copyright is owned
jointly by every contributor and that's all the notice is saying. The PGDG
doesn't exist separately from the members as a legal person like a corporation
might.

It may be that the notice is insufficient for some legal purposes because it
doesn't explicitly name a legal person. However under the Berne convention
notices are actually irrelevant to claiming ownership anyways. The only impact
an insufficient notice might have is to make it harder to sue for damages (we
would still be able to sue to stop further infringement but not damages until
after the notice).

I suspect it's not actually true that it's insufficient notice but that's
something a lawyer should be able to answer easily. I also am entirely
skeptical that we care about being able to sue for damages.

If this were a GPL project it might matter more. But given that it's BSD we're
only interested in the copyright notices to protect ourselves from someone
else claiming they wrote it and we're infringing. Not to be able to pursue
someone else for infringing on our copyright.

--
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com
  Ask me about EnterpriseDB's Slony Replication support!