License / copyright?

[cwebber]

I wonder what the copyright situation is with this project? Granted, it's inheriting code from I think before software copyright was a common thing? But maybe MIT has publicly licensed it as something?

I know that MIT released the CADR lisp machine source as libre software; could the same be done (has it been done?) for ITS?

At the very least, new contributions should clearly be licensed. Remember that "not copyright notice" means "all rights reserved".

[36bit]

MIT released parts of ITS and documentation under the GPLv2-or-any-later version back in 1999: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/ftpdir/its/
So the copies of those things that are in this project should also be using the same (although I propose upgrading it to version 3.)

For the rest? Well, U.S. copyright law has changed over the years. Software wasn't copyrightable in the U.S. prior to 1980, so those parts of ITS that date from before then can be considered in the public domain (although they should have a note in them about that so that people can know their status.)

Even once software became copyrightable in the United States, there were some formalities required like adding a copyright notice. This isn't a requirement anymore though: In today's world software is automatically copyrighted just by virtue of having been made. Back in the day not including one resulted in a loss of copyright. So, the other components of ITS (from 1980 and later) could also be considered public domain if they lack a copyright notice. They, too, should also have a note in them about that so that people can know their status.

Given how much U.S. copyright law has changed over the years Cornell has published a nice little chart that people can follow to determine the copyright status of things, based on when it was published (I propose using the dates associated with the files to know when, unless someone has a better idea.)
http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

For everything else, like contributions from today get an automatic "All Rights Reserved" copyright regardless of whether the person wants that or not, I propose adopting a similar license as what MIT did for the rest of ITS: Using GPLv2-or-any-later-version (although, really, upgrading to GPLv3.) This would make the licensing sane and consistent across the whole operating system.

This could be added in a note in the Contibuting document. Perhaps adding something like the Developer Certificate of Origin, which is licensed as CC BY-SA: http://web.archive.org/web/20070306195036/http://osdlab.org/newsroom/press_releases/2004/2004_05_24_dco.html and then have people use Git's "signed-off-by" feature as a way to document their assent.

[cwebber]

Sounds good to me. Note that while adding copyright notices isn't formally required, I think I seem to remember that adding notices akin to the GPL headers you see in most GPL projects makes clear the copyright of each individual file. From the GPL's own text (their advisory section on applying terms and conditions):

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
state the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

But, most important is getting a COPYING file in place that has the appropriate licensing. I agree with the Developer Certificate of Origin too, a good choice.

[larsbrinkhoff]

COPYING is now in place.

[larsbrinkhoff]

This has been adressed in #230 and #264.