Re: Fedora Board Recap 07-06-2011

[Matt Clark <mathezula@xxxxxxxxx>]

No, there's no such thing as an implicit license. A work is implicitly copyrighted the moment it is written, and, by default, no one has a legal "right" (differentiate from permission) to redistribute it, or produce derived works from it (of course, the author might not mind, but that's another matter entirely). In other words, lack of license is roughly the same as "look but don't touch" license. �

If something is "unlicensed but copyrighted" unless specified (as all unlicensed material is as soon as it is written) then it is up to the kindness of the author. �I wish it were simpler, too.

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Richard Fontana <rfontana@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 12:49:11AM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 07/06/2011 11:52 PM, Jon Stanley wrote:

> > *** In the US, at least, there's only minimal rights associated with
> > things that have no license, therefore, we would be on shakey legal
> > grounds if we accepted contributions without license terms
>
> Yet this routinely happens. �Patches contributed via bugzilla or ones
> that contributors pick from mailing lists etc.

I think there may be some confusion on this one particular
point. Something can be licensed even if it doesn't have an explicit
license notice on it. Implicit licensing is pervasive in free software
development.

We use the term of art "Unlicensed" in the FPCA, but, if you imagine a
world where the FPCA isn't used *and* Rahul's mandatory explicit
licensing alternative isn't adopted, Fedora contributions are still
licensed even when they don't have license notices on them. And those
Bugzilla patches or mailing list patches from non-FAS people are
licensed too. In the FPCA, "Unlicensed" just means "doesn't have an
explicit license notice"; it doesn't mean unlicensed.

Arguably, a benefit of the FPCA is that in a large number of cases
that might otherwise be governed by implicit licensing, there is an
understanding that an explicit license has been granted by the
contributor, so there is total clarity about the terms governing the
contribution. I think that must be the point the Board was really
trying to make. This may also lead to additional benefits which I have
heard spot articulate. But most projects deal with implicit licensing
to some degree or other, including Fedora.

- RF

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