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

[Zluty Sysel]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 3:45 PM, Gervase Markham <gerv at mozilla.org> wrote:
> 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.

Good to know, thanks for the information.

>> 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.

So just to be sure, if the contributors waiver their ownership rights,
then the 3-clause BSD stands and if users do not acknowledge usage of
the software in their binary distributions it is up to the company to
choose whether to enforce or not that obligation, leaving us the
option of not enforcing it with certain customers.

>>> * 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.

I see, a bit of confusion arose here with the word "waiver" because
there are 2 potential ones: the one that contributors would have to
agree to to contribute, and the one that exempts certain users from
revealing the fact that they are using our libraries. You were I think
referring to the former.

>> 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.

Do we really need additional paperwork? wouldn't it be enough to have
a license agreement that each contributor has to accept
(electronically, just by pressing "Accept" or something to that
effect).
In our particular case, and given the nature of our software, we
believe a waiver to the to the attribution clause in binary
distributions would be more than acceptable for our potential
contributors, so this could be the solution we're after.

Thanks again.

Zluty