[License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Gervase Markham]

On 02/10/15 14:26, Zluty Sysel wrote:
> What if we accepted contributions from individuals but only
> "acknowledged" their work in a special "THANKS" or "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT"
> file without modifying at all the "(c) TheCompany" in the license
> itself and therefore not granting any ownership rights to the
> contributors?

Copyright doesn't work like that. The copyright automatically belongs to
the author, and you need a license or transfer or other legal agreement
to change that situation. You can't take their copyright simply by
virtual of not crediting them or by not labelling the software with
their copyright.

> If I'm not mistaken the zlib license would fit our requirements since
> it does not require attribution, it only encourages it. I might be
> wrong though.
> Would the zlib license not be usable in the EU?

zlib is widely used in the EU. So yes, this license would also be suitable.

> If we did that we wouldn't need the waiver anymore I believe, from a
> previous response in this thread. Because then we'd be the sole
> copyright owners and therefore the only ones authorized to enforce our
> copyright, we could simply choose not to do so.

Yes.

>> * Require contributors to give a limited waiver solely for the
>> attribution clause.
> 
> Maybe i have misunderstood the previous option. What would be the
> difference between this option and the previous one? 

Merely the more limited scope of the waiver.

> Is it that in the
> last one the contributor still owns the rights to his/her code but
> waivers the right to be present in notices for binary distributions?
> And the previous one makes him or her give the ownership rights
> completely?

Yes.

> In any case would the last 2 options be compatible with BSD and open
> source in general? Because that could work for us.

They would be legally compatible; however, requiring copyright
assignment will reduce the pool of people willing to contribute to your
project, either because they object to giving you the exclusive right to
make money by proprietarizing their hard work, or because of the
additional hassle of doing the paperwork.

Gerv