[beyond-licensing] Legal topics that FOSS projects could use more information on

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2016, Danese Cooper wrote:
>> On Jun 15, 2016, at 7:23 AM, Brian Behlendorf <brian at behlendorf.com> wrote:
>>
>> I don't claim to have all the data here, then; how did it have the 
>> right to relicense code contributed by others before that point?  Is 
>> "accumulation" acquiring full copyright control to the code, or merely 
>> the right to relicense?
>
> Because Mozilla doesn't aggregate copyrights they were forced to 
> assemble majority agreement before relicensing. It took more than 2 
> years. I know about this because Sun was the last major contributor to 
> sign the agreement.

It likely took more than a mere majority of contributors, since a majority 
owner of a combined work can't just relicense the parts within.  E.g. if I 
write code that incorporates GPL-licensed work, I can't re-license the 
whole if I wrote the "majority" of the combined work.  I'm recalling this 
now, it took going back to every major and minor contributor, and then 
making a calculated risk regarding anyone who didn't respond; it must have 
also involved rewriting or dropping code from anyone who objected.  No?

But either way, it makes the point - relicensing, a good desirable thing 
in this case, took a ton more work than it could have.

Brian