Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Remove Jan Wieck's name from - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

He does make a point ... if there is only one copyright holder, even if 
right now its a non-entity, if someone like Oracle came along, *created* a 
legal entity called 'The PostgreSQL Global Development Group', they could, 
in theory, change the License wihtout needing to get approval from 
current/past contributors ...

by retaining accreditation/copyright for those contributing the code, like 
other projects do do, then changing the license becomes that much more 
difficult ... no?

Example, wu-ftpd:

/****************************************************************************
  Copyright (c) 1999,2000 WU-FTPD Development Group.  All rights reserved.
  Portions Copyright (c) 1980, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994    The Regents of the University of California.
Portions Copyright (c) 1993, 1994 Washington University in Saint Louis.  Portions Copyright (c) 1996, 1998 Berkeley
SoftwareDesign, Inc.  Portions Copyright (c) 1989 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Portions Copyright (c) 1998
Sendmail,Inc.  Portions Copyright (c) 1983, 1995, 1996, 1997 Eric P.  Allman.  Portions Copyright (c) 1997 by Stan
Barber. Portions Copyright (c) 1997 by Kent Landfield.  Portions Copyright (c) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997
  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 
  Use and distribution of this software and its source code are governed  by the terms and conditions of the WU-FTPD
SoftwareLicense ("LICENSE").
 
  If you did not receive a copy of the license, it may be obtained online  at http://www.wu-ftpd.org/license.html.
  $Id: extensions.c,v 1.48 2000/07/01 18:17:38 wuftpd Exp $

****************************************************************************/


On Thu, 9 Mar 2006, 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.
>
> -- 
> Robert Treat
> Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
>

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