More licensing followup...

I just posted this reply on chromatic's journal: 

So, the relicensing has two parts:

The first part is directly addressing Allison's worry that asserting a less-restrictve "compilation copyright" than something under the source tree, will invite legal troubles. I responded by disclaiming my compilation copyright.

The second part is my wish to change the src/ tree, which comprises the source for "pugs" executable, to public domain status, by moving all third-party parts out to a separate place (third-party/), and rewriting parts of the contributions where the contributor would like to maintain Artistic2.0b5+GPL license status for their contributions.

All contributions outside the src/ tree remains unaffected.

I thank your contribution in parameter binding and object finalization. Due to the Capture unification and disappearance of References, they need to be rewritten anyway. I regret that you will not participate in the rewrite.

I have also reflected this situation in the Pugs README file.  A summary:

• Disclaiming my compilation-copyright over Pugs does not affect any contributed code.
• Moving third-party code to third-party/ does not affect any contributed code on those third-party code, since they still retain their own license.
• All contributed code outside src/ directory remains unaffected.
• The src/ directory is currently still under Artistic 2.0b5/GPL, but I'd like to relax this restriction, making the "pugs" binary itself public domain software.  This will not take effect until the next release.
• The rationale for the src/ change is that I think the social dynamics of the Pugs src/ tree differs from the intent of restrictions imposed by Artistic2.0b14.
• Also, it is more common for research/prototype project to under BSD  license, MIT  license, or public domain. I'd like to let those projects reuse Pugs's source code, which Artistic2 does not allow.
• Also, it is always possible for TPF (or anybody) to later pick up the public-domain part of Pugs, and redistribute it under Artistic2, or any other license (MPL or BSD, for example).  This ensures the possibility for a "production" version of Pugs later adopted by an organization.
• If you have previously committed into src/, and disagree with making your code available without restrictions, then please inform me, just like chromatic did.

Since chromatic considers public domain equivalent to a no-rights-retained license (e.g. MIT), and he would like his contributions to remain under Artistic/GPL, he wished that the src/ parts be rewritten, remarking that it is easier to do so rather than trying to convince him.  I have since complied with his wish, and rewrote all his code under src/ as of r10068.

Update: It turns out that chromatic thinks MIT license is okay. Pending further communication, maybe there is yet hope of agreement...

Comments

[chromatic]

Thank you for addressing this so quickly; I very much appreciate it!

[Juerd]

Perhaps it's good to have a LICENSING file in the repository's root, where licenses are mentioned per directory, and where authors can declare their own statements ("I hereby disclaim copyright", "My contributions are under MIT license").

Licensing is important for more than just the src/ tree. I've contributed documentation and tests, both of which I think should be in the public domain, or MIT domain. A centralized administration of licensing information would allow me to pre-emptively re/unlicense my contributions to everything.

And in the future, reading such a file is much easier than browsing through blog comments, IRC logs, and use.perl journals.