kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 8:16 AM, Oliver Walters
<oliver.henry.walters@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Would it be sufficient to drop the "Copyright (C) 2017 KiCad" header?
>

No, because we have no idea who holds copyright. KiCad cannot be a
copyright holder
because it is not a legal entity (person or corporation). We would
need to maintain a text
file which is a register of the copyright holders of each file.  To
complicate things, many
models are generated from parametric scripts.  The scripts themselves
are copyright
material but the models produced is a different matter. If you can get
all script contributors
to agree, then I think it would be best to release the generated
models as Public Domain.
Even this is not so simple because we would need to maintain a
directory with declarations
from script contributors to state that the output of the scripts are
Public Domain. Even
that is not so simple because some jurisdictions may not accept that mechanism.

- Cirilo

> On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 5:28 PM, Javier Serrano
> <javier.serrano.pareja@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 3:27 AM, Oliver Walters
>> <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
>
>
>
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