Subject: Re: Legal stuff
From: Eric W. Sink (eric@sourcegear.com)
Date: Sun Jul 09 2000 - 08:29:00 CDT
No te preocupes.
First of all, remember that the entity "AbiSource, Inc." no longer
exists in the formal sense. It did exist, and it was a subsidiary
of SourceGear. However, that subsidiary has been folded into the
parent with all of its assets transferred. We need to do a massive
search and replace on the code to fix all those copyright messages,
but we just haven't gotten around to doing it. We'll take care of
it sooner or later.
And, more to the point of your question: SourceGear owns only those
portions of the AbiWord source code which were produced by its
employees. We certainly do not claim copyright on the word produced
by community developers on this project.
There are now `wc -l abi/CREDITS.txt` contributors to the AbiWord, more
or less, and likewise, there are approximately that many copyright
holders. AbiWord is like the Linux kernel. If you want to take it
proprietary, you can, but you have to get the written consent of
everyone in the CREDITS file.
AbiWord, like the Linux kernel, will always be Free software.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Lehmann" <aaronl@vitelus.com>
To: <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2000 1:43 AM
Subject: Legal stuff
> I was talking to a GNU person today about copyright, and it got me
> wondering about what AbiSource's position on copyright is. Do they
claim
> copyright for contributed source becuase the source files say
"Copyright
> AbiSource Inc."? Or are they more of a sponsor to a community project?
>
> Since I never signed any paperwork relating to AbiSource, I have no
idea
> whether they claim copyright for contributions or not, and I doubt
that
> they can legally claim it without having people sign over copyright to
> contributions.
>
> I don't actually have any issues that require this clairification, but
I'm
> just wondering about the legal stuff involved. I'm not a lawyer. But I
> wouldn't want anyone, even AbiSource, suddenly turning stuff I worked
on
> into proprietary software. So, I think it is a valid question.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Aaron Lehmann
>
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