Merging two projects and their licenses

[David Woolley]

Johan Tibell wrote:

> This is really hard as the code quickly gets intermingled: a single
> file may contain code snippets that have different copyright. Is it
> sufficient that the actual author (and thus copyright holder) of any
> particular piece of code can be retrieved from the version control
> system that the code is stored in?

That's only viable if you distribute the version control repository, 
rather than a single version.

> 
> I've never seen copyright statement more granular than on a per-file
> basis. How do projects deal with multiple contributors and their
> copyright?

A number of open source projects have had serious problems because of 
this, when a copyright owner reneges on a licence; they may have to 
abandon a whole file.

-- 
David Woolley
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