<div dir="auto"><div>Josh, all of the things that you are talking about with regard to documentation would also be creating derivative works of the documentation, and what happened would depend on the license applied to the documentation. Software is text, copyright isn't a special thing for software rather than other forms of text.</div><div><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Bruce Perens K6BP</div></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Dec 8, 2025, 16:07 Josh Berkus <<a href="mailto:josh@berkus.org">josh@berkus.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">On 12/8/25 3:43 PM, Pamela Chestek wrote:<br>
> As to Josh's comment "No text contained within the license can enforce <br>
> that my PR is under that license," I disagree. When I created my <br>
> contribution I necessarily accepted the terms of the outbound license, <br>
> or at least I am hard-pressed to think of a way that someone made a <br>
> contribution that matters but would not have taken an action that <br>
> requires acceptance of the license.<br>
<br>
I can think of lots of ways to make a meaningful contribution without <br>
having either run or redistributed the software:<br>
<br>
- Someone contributing grammar corrections to the docs or website <br>
without using the software<br>
<br>
- Someone offering to naturalize the documentation based on a <br>
translation framework, which also doesn't require using the software<br>
<br>
- Someone building a code contribution based on a differently licensed <br>
version of the same software (if, for example, it's available under a <br>
proprietary license as well)<br>
<br>
- Someone submitting 3rd-party dependency version updates without <br>
running the software (like, for example, DependaBot does, and humans do <br>
this as well).<br>
<br>
- A graphics designer submitting a change to graphics or UI design <br>
created entirely with design programs.<br>
<br>
I'm sure there's other situations I haven't thought of. Are most <br>
contributions based on the contributor having first downloaded and run <br>
the software under the license? Sure. But definitely not all of them.<br>
<br>
-- <br>
Josh Berkus<br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>