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jimmejardine / qiqqa-open-source

The open-sourced version of the award-winning Qiqqa research management tool for Windows
GNU General Public License v3.0
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The help>About window says that Qiqqa is copyrighted #259

Open raindropsfromsky opened 3 years ago

raindropsfromsky commented 3 years ago

The Help > About window says that "Qiqqa is Copyright © Quantisle 2010-2020".

Probably this refers to the closed-source of Qiqqa. In the opensource version of Qiqqa, this sentence should be removed.

GerHobbelt commented 3 years ago

Technically (or should I say 'legally'?), Qiqqa was indeed copyright Quantisle / Jardine until 2019 when the company officially stopped support and made Qiqqa open source (GPL: https://github.com/jimmejardine/qiqqa-open-source/blob/master/LICENSE -- see also "How to apply" section at the bottom of that file).

After the "going open source" date in H2 2019 (oh, first commit dec531335d9a30ad04a1a6caa77a9d42e2cf025b is on, ahhhh, 3-july-2019) Qiqqa is still copyright Jimmy Jardine (he put the code on line, so I assume he has legal ownership of the stuff 😉 ), now with some stuff done by me as well.

Anyway, the copyright does not take away that it's now all under GPL3, which allows, roughly speaking, anyway to pick it up and use it as long as they adhere to the GPL3 license.

The key understanding that I have of this copyright business vs. licenses is this (not-a-lawyer, painting-with-broad-brush, disclaimer 😉 ): the originator ('author') of the work retains copyright and should therefor be credited as copyright holder (also in GPL2/GPL3 licenses). Then there's the GPL license, which turns this whole kaboodle into a legal open source state of affairs by being a license for anyone accessing and/or using the copyrighted work, which says you're free to access and use (and re-use) this copyrighted work, as long as you stick to the conditions set forth in said license, which is that 'you' must do as the original owner and publish anything you have included this in under the same 'free' license.

Lawyers will by now probably be exercising their right to when reading the above paragraph, but the important bit I know is that the copyright remains, also in the open source version. It's just that you can't close-source it ever again and then try to sell copies/licenses for using Qiqqa.

So, yes, 👍 good catch: this should indeed be updated as Jimmy Jardine should be mentioned there and probably follow that one up with a contributor list, including yours truly. And nope, the sentence should not be removed, but augmented with the actual state of affairs.

😟 I hope this clarifies it a bit and doesn't make it more confusing. Just in case, might be handy to google for better write-ups on this copyright-and-the-GPL legal business.

raindropsfromsky commented 3 years ago

I saw some mention of "copyleft", which also should be considered.

Thanks in advance!

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 2:52 AM Ger Hobbelt notifications@github.com wrote:

Technically (or should I say 'legally'?), Qiqqa was indeed copyright Quantisle / Jardine until 2019 when the company officially stopped support and made Qiqqa open source (GPL: https://github.com/jimmejardine/qiqqa-open-source/blob/master/LICENSE -- see also "How to apply" section at the bottom of that file).

After the "going open source" date in H2 2019 (oh, first commit dec5313 https://github.com/jimmejardine/qiqqa-open-source/commit/dec531335d9a30ad04a1a6caa77a9d42e2cf025b is on, ahhhh, 3-july-2019) Qiqqa is still copyright Jimmy Jardine (he put the code on line, so I assume he has legal ownership of the stuff 😉 ), now with some stuff done by me as well.

Anyway, the copyright does not take away that it's now all under GPL3, which allows, roughly speaking, anyway to pick it up and use it as long as they adhere to the GPL3 license.

The key understanding that I have of this copyright business vs. licenses is this (not-a-lawyer, painting-with-broad-brush, disclaimer 😉 ): the originator ('author') of the work retains copyright and should therefor be credited as copyright holder (also in GPL2/GPL3 licenses). Then there's the GPL license, which turns this whole kaboodle into a legal open source state of affairs by being a license for anyone accessing and/or using the copyrighted work, which says you're free to access and use (and re-use) this copyrighted work, as long as you stick to the conditions set forth in said license, which is that 'you' must do as the original owner and publish anything you have included this in under the same 'free' license.

Lawyers will by now probably be exercising their right to when reading the above paragraph, but the important bit I know is that the copyright remains, also in the open source version. It's just that you can't close-source it ever again and then try to sell copies/licenses for using Qiqqa.

So, yes, 👍 good catch: this should indeed be updated as Jimmy Jardine should be mentioned there and probably follow that one up with a contributor list, including yours truly. And nope, the sentence should not be removed, but augmented with the actual state of affairs.

😟 I hope this clarifies it a bit and doesn't make it more confusing. Just in case, might be handy to google for better write-ups on this copyright-and-the-GPL legal business.

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GerHobbelt commented 3 years ago

First bit of work on this: commit 7e1423a8f98e6e419f0e1a9445ca01ab9e9ace0c * one of the files that are about copyright, license, etc. is now largely adapted to the GPL3 (as it should be).

The weekend got completely consumed by bughunting #257 + #264. More later.