On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 02:05:32AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Bart Martens <ba...@debian.org> writes: > > On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 12:54:10AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > >> Bart Martens <ba...@debian.org> writes: > > >>> That "authors" are not the same as "copyright holders" is simply a > >>> fact regardless of what debian-policy states. For example, the > >>> programmer who wrote some software can be the "author" and the company > >>> the programmer was working for can be the "copyright holder". > > >> This is the part I don't find this at all obvious. To me, it's the > >> difference between referring to the collective entity or disassembling > >> it into its constituent parts. Either are usually considered correct; > >> one could say that the Free Software Foundation is the author of GNU > >> time, or that several specific volunteers for the Free Software > >> Foundation are the authors of GNU time, and be correct either way. > > > I don't see this as "the collective entity" and "constituent parts". > > Being an author doesn't make one a copyright holder. And being a > > copyright holder doesn't make one an author. The terms "author" and > > "copyright holder" are different terms with different meanings. > > > Of course, some/many/most authors are also copyright holders of their > > works, but not always. Authors and copyright holders of the same works > > can be different parties with different interests. > > Ah! Yes. I see your point here, and agree with it.
Breakthrough ! Hooray ! :-) > > In this case, I would consider the FSF both the copyright holder *and* the > author (in a collective sense), since the people who worked on the > software did so under the aegis of the FSF. It was an FSF project written > by FSF volunteers as part of the overall GNU project (like most GNU > software). In this case I don't see the FSF as an author. The fact that the software was written under the umbrella of the FSF does not make the FSF an author. Also the FSF is not mentioned anywhere as an author of this software. > But I could see the case where those things could be quite > distinct, even when involving the FSF (for example, if I remember > correctly, the Objective C GCC frontend wasn't written by the FSF and was > contributed to the FSF after the fact by separate authors who wouldn't > have thought of themselves as part of the FSF). That sounds like a good example of distinct authors and copyright holders. > > That's a difficult distinction to draw if there isn't good upstream > documentation of the origin of the software. So I suppose it would be > generally safer to list the actual people, since that way you wouldn't get > it wrong if you misunderstood the organizational affiliation. Fortunately most upstream tarballs clearly state who is author and who is copyright holder, so Debian can then simply use that information. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120623104320.gi32...@master.debian.org
