Re: List the copyright holders (Re: Level Comment...)

[Jarno Elonen]

> At which level of contribution does one start to list someone?

If the contribution is long enough to be treated as "creative works". A single 
sentence (e.g. "software is like sex, it's better when it's free") doesn't 
count but a poem usually does. I think that's pretty good guideline when 
thinking about code contributions as well.

> I know  that in some states like the usa, you can give up your copyright
> entirely and put things into the public domain. In germany on the other
> hand, you can never give up the copyright itself, only the rights
> stemming from it.

Same here in Finland. You always have the "moral rights".

> > BTW: now that I'm still the only copyright holder of the comment tool,
> > I'd like to change the license of the tool to Modified BSD instead of
> > GPL. If someone want's to use some snippet of PHP from it, I don't see
> > any reason to require all her other PHP code to be GPL'd. Please apply
> > the attached patch to subversion and delete COPYING. The patch contains
> > no functional changes.
>
> Well, to do it absolutely correct, I'll have to gather the permission of
> Björn Fischer first or revert his patch if he doesn't approve, right?

No, unless you have already commited more than a few lines from him. That's 
why I asked at this time.

> I  hate those pesky legal matters, it's a shame for humanity as a whole
> that one has to put so much thought into them.

I agree wholeheartedly. However, now that we have the pesky laws, we'd better 
take them seriously.

- Jarno