At 9:18 PM -0500 3/9/06, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>Robert Treat wrote:
>> On Thursday 09 March 2006 20:16, Tom Lane wrote:
>> > "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
>> > > I am not sure, but I think that Alvaro's point is the copyright
>> > > doesn't matter in this instance. It is the license that does.
>> >
>> > Certainly, but if the file says "Copyright PostgreSQL Global Development
>> > Group" then it's reasonable to assume that the intended license is the
>> > one in the top COPYRIGHT file. If the file says copyright someone else
>> > then this requires a bit of a leap of faith. If the file actually
>> > contains its own license language (as Jan's files did till just now)
>> > then that's unquestionably an independent license that you have to pay
>> > attention to if you're redistributing.
>> >
>> > > It is very good to keep everything consistent.
>> >
>> > Yup, that's all we're after.
>> >
>>
>> It would be very good if it wasn't likely to cause more legal
>>trouble than it
>> will help. Removing copyrights from actual people to be replaced with a
>> non-existent legal entity might be construed as eliminating any copyright
>> claim at all. Even if you could get the global development group recognized
>> legally as the copyright holder, you've only consolidated things for someone
>> to attempt to gain ownership of the code.
>
>With the BSD license, there really isn't any restriction to enforce, so
>the copyright owner is pretty meaningless.
IANAL, but as I understand things, it's not possible to disclaim
ownership of something. That's why the BSD license is preferable to
"public domain". In most legal jurisdictions, liability (for
whatever) belongs to the copyright holder. By adding a license,
particularly one as liberal as the BSD license, you're setting rules
for how the code can be used, _and those rules can disclaim
liability_. Essentially, if you take responsibility for something,
you can legally insist that others use it responsibly (and if they
don't, they broke your rules so it's not your fault.)
Again, IANAL, but my $0.02 would be that copyright always stay with
some legal entity, either the individual authors, or some actual
holding company.
Distributed individual copyrights (like the WU-FTPD example) seem to
provide the most protection for preserving the license status quo,
since everyone on the list would have to agree to change it.
OTOH, an LLC or similar entity can shield individual authors from
legal liability. (Though the license itself might be sufficient.)
-pmb