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managed-commons / SvgNet

Fork of the SVG library for .NET that makes a GdiGraphics that "draws" on a SVG model
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
84 stars 37 forks source link

Clarify and unify the license header in source files #3

Closed xmojmr closed 9 years ago

xmojmr commented 9 years ago

The final goal of this ticket is to make clear who is the new license holder and what GitHub user's can do with it and make sure that exactly same copy of the license is present in the source files.

Original code publisher (Ben Peterson, 9 Mar 2003) does not maintain the code anymore so the license agreement should be reconnected to here.

I tried to find the correct solution myself by reading answers to a few licensing questions like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=relicense bsd but failed.

This is not permissive WTFPL and the original copyright owner (Riskcare) legally exists so I don't know how to resolve it with a pull request as I'm not a lawyer.

From my point of view the correct way out is to contact Benjamin Peterson, even though he does not work for Riskcare anymore, and negotiate with him the copyright change.

Some related things I find strange:

  1. license present in source files looks like BSD-2-Clause but instead of BSD text "SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS" the license contains "SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS". Author and copyright holder may be different things
  2. license present in readme looks like BSD-3-Clause but instead of BSD text "SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS" the license contains "SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR". The contributors part is missing and author and copyright holder may be different things
  3. license present in readme adds Copyright © 2010 SvgNet & SvgGdi Bridge Project. All rights reserved clause.
  4. license in some new edited files adds Copyright © 2010 SvgNet & SvgGdi Bridge Project. All rights reserved clause
  5. license in the old source files does not mention Copyright © 2010 SvgNet & SvgGdi Bridge Project at all
  6. original CodeProject license said: "SvgNet is an Open Source project under a BSD-like license (license terms are reproduced in every SvgNet source file). SvgNet is copyright 2003 RiskCare Ltd.". The company "RiskCare Ltd." with exactly this name may be already gone and the new company "Riskcare" might loose it's rights or the company may not even know or care about some source code created by it's ex-employees decade ago
bjsp123 commented 9 years ago

I'm the original author -- thanks for your interest in SvgNet. I wrote SvgNet more than 10 years ago at Riskcare Ltd -- the copyright holder is therefore Riskcare. Riskcare still exists (www.riskcare.com), though I doubt if anyone there remembers this code.

As for the wording in the license, I'm afraid I have no idea where it comes from! The intention was for it to be a BSD-2 style license, so treating it thus would be in the spirit of the original project.

I would suggest contacting Riskcare's current CTO, if you need details from Riskcare -- although he wasn't there when this code was written. In fact, I'll send him a note now...

monoman commented 9 years ago

Thanks for the clarification, so far!

Rafael Teixeira O..:.)oooo

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 3:26 PM, bjsp123 notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm the original author -- thanks for your interest in SvgNet. I wrote SvgNet more than 10 years ago at Riskcare Ltd -- the copyright holder is therefore Riskcare. Riskcare still exists (www.riskcare.com), though I doubt if anyone there remembers this code.

As for the wording in the license, I'm afraid I have no idea where it comes from! The intention was for it to be a BSD-2 style license, so treating it thus would be in the spirit of the original project.

I would suggest contacting Riskcare's current CTO, if you need details from Riskcare -- although he wasn't there when this code was written. In fact, I'll send him a note now...

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/managed-commons/SvgNet/issues/3#issuecomment-83702416 .