RE: [Nel] contrib et fix

[Daniel Miller]

OK - What you propose sounds sensible to me - do you have a standard
agreement somewhere that you recommend?

Daniel


-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden Behalf Of
Loic Dachary
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 8:54 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Nel] contrib et fix


Vianney Lecroart writes:
 >
 > I know that there is a difference between a contribution (a large patch)
and
 > a fix, but I would like to know if there are official Doc.
 > which spoke the limit between the 2.  If somebody gives us a patch of 15
 > lines, is a this fix or a contrib?  Is the limit fixed by a number of
line?
 > If so, where is the limit? Is there a URL which speaks about that?
 >

        AFAIK, the 15 lines of code threshold is informal and based on
past judgements. It could be argued that this is an urban legend (internet
legend ?-). I could ask for confirmation to a lawyer if this is important.
I have no reference URL handy.

        This limit is important when a developer or a company needs to
make sure it is the sole copyright holder of the software. This is the
best way to make sure a Free Software can be properly defended when/if
a license violation occurs. Being the single copyright holder puts you
in the best position to negotiate with the violator so that she
complies to the license terms. Multiplying the copyright holders of a
given software is a technique to prevent a Free Software to become
proprietary but is rather inefficient to enforce the license if needs
be.

        If it's not already the case, it would be good that
contributors to nel assign copyright to Nevrax, much in the same way
as contributors assign copyright to the FSF. Of course, when a
contributor to GNU Emacs (for instance) assigns copyright to the FSF
for her work, the FSF makes a written promise to release the
contribution under a Free Software license.  This is a fair system
that Nevrax could use for nel. Of course, you don't want to bother
about copyright assignment with every contributor who provides only a
few lines and this is where the 15 lines threshold helps you.

        When nel becomes widely used, I guess Nevrax will need to
handle significant contributions and a few violators. The fact that
nel is released under the GNU GPL (instead of the GNU LGPL for
instance) helps. It is *a lot* harder to convince violators on GNU
LGPL'ed code. When someone (note that I do not say if someone ;-)
expands nel and distribute the result without the corresponding source
code, it won't take more than a few weeks to convince her to comply.
As it turns out, the GNU GPL is the only license that is efficient
to protect a Free Software company business.

        Cheers,

--
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  address@hidden
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      address@hidden
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          address@hidden
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt
_______________________________________________
Nel mailing list
address@hidden
http://www.nevrax.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/nel