[vorbis] Vorbis licensing...

[Kenneth Arnold]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2000 at 02:47:27PM -0800, Monty wrote:
> > Why not put together a list of things Monty / Xiphophorus / all contributers
> > are willing to tolerate and not for Vorbis (1) library and (2) example use
> > code. I'll start with the following suggestions:
> 
> Ah, this brings up another issue.
> 
> Sometime soon we need to get around to doing copyright assignment to
> Xiphophorus of contributed code.  The practical reson for doing this
> is mostly one of perception.  Even open-source friendly organizations
> are frightened of being held captive by one developer in a group
> throwing a tantrum (that RMS hasn't contributed code eases this
> perception somewhat).

Yes. Definately. Assume that all of my stuff goes to Xiphophorus; if
there needs to be some official process for this then count me in.

> The implications of this are:
> 
> 1) A developer cannot, n days or n years down the road, sue for
> copyright violation (for distributing his/her code) or decide to pull
> all his/her contributed code from the sourcebase (or threaten to do
> so).  Note that this has happened.

GPL's 3-year source requirement here? My first impression is that it does
apply, but it can't if you're the copyright holder... ? anyway, with all
code over to xiph it won't matter.

> 2) Xiphophorus can worry less about distributed paperwork when dealing
> with license issues/exemptions.
> 
> I'm probably missing one or two.

fsf.org might have a few pointers, just s/fsf/xiph/g

> The idea is not to streamline ourselves for remodeling as a facist
> software house (or eliminate outside/community input into decisions),
> but rather to tie up some of the loose ends that our lawyers warn us
> could make us a trivial target for litigation/general avoidable headaches.

Be thankful you have lawers.


-- 
Kenneth Arnold <ken at arnoldnet.net> / kcarnold / Linux user #180115
http://arnoldnet.net/~kcarnold/

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