kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Please disregard my previous statements about the kicad copyright
assignment.  The kicad developers copyright is not an assignment to the
kicad project.  It is a place holder for changes to the original file by
other developers rather than having each individual contributor adding
their own copyright to the file.  This is even spelled out in the
copyright.h template file.  Sorry about the confusion.

On 6/29/2017 3:28 AM, Javier Serrano wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 3:27 AM, Oliver Walters
> <oliver.henry.walters@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:oliver.henry.walters@xxxxxxxxx>>
> wrote:
> 
>     Wayne, others,
> 
>     A lot of input here, thanks everyone.
> 
>     Based on the suggestions above, my proposal is as follows:
> 
>     --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>     symbols licence file:
> 
>     --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     Copyright (C) 2017 KiCad
> 
> 
>  I agree with Simon that "KiCad" cannot be the copyright holder. Imagine
> for the sake of argument I need to contact the copyright holder. Say I
> would like to negotiate with him/her a change of licence. I want to use
> the material without being subject to the CC-BY-SA licence, and I am
> willing to pay for it. So I'd like to benefit from some kind of
> dual-licensing scheme, whereby I receive e.g. a copy of a 3D model file
> with a special licence just for me. Only the copyright holder can do
> that. Now I go to the file and I read "Copyright KiCad." Who should I
> speak to? Who has the right to do what I need? That's just an example.
> For any action where you would need the copyright holder to do
> something, you'd bump against the same issue. One could conceivably
> define KiCad as a valid legal entity, and then you could have KiCad be
> the copyright holder, as the FSF is the copyright holder of lots of
> code, but that's a strategic change to be discussed, I guess, with the
> project leader and the project initiator. Right now, KiCad cannot be the
> holder of any copyright. The same applies, IMHO, to "KiCad developers."
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Javier