> That is the case for *anything*. We could change the PostgreSQL
> licence if we wanted, but it would take a huge amount of effort and
> approval of every contributor ever whose work could be considered an
> artistic contribution.
I doubt it. Do you think that every single contributor is contactable?
Haven't some died? My guess is that it would be completely impossible.
> With PostgreSQL we rely on the sheer number of contributors to ensure
> the licence will never actually change. We cannot have such a
> guarantee for most smaller projects of course - simply attributing
> copyright to a non-existent legal entity such as PGDG (or as I
> understand it, even an actual entity) doesn't actually change who
> legally owns the copyright.
>
> To get the protection I think you seek, I believe we'd need to create
> a legal entity to own the copyright and then have every contributor to
> anything on pgFoundry sign a copyright assignment agreement that
> grants the legal entity copyright on the current and all future
> versions of that work, as hosted on there. And even then, there's no
> guarantee that the legal entity couldn't be bought or change it's
> charter, unless there's some way to irrevocably build things into its
> statutes.
IANAL, but I know that there was a similar situation when Trolltech
still existed and controlled the Qt framework. It was dual licensed
GPL2/proprietary (it is now dual LGPL/proprietary). Contributors were
required to sign reams of paperwork, which had to be sent out by fax
(I'm not sure why), to assign the copyright to Trolltech. Thankfully,
that situation has changed under Nokia - contributors retain the
copyright, and there is minimal red tape. Contributors are now asked
to grant Qt Software a non-exclusive right to re-use code as a part of
Qt, the first time they submit code for inclusion.
Regards,
Peter Geoghegan