Clarify license type and status #13
Comments
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It could be argued this is public domain at this point. |
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The only recourse a copyright holder has is a lawsuit. After the number of attempts made to contact Seth with no response, I assume he is dead. I doubt he is going to sue anyone. Just document all the steps that have been taken to contact Seth and license his code. You might even go so far as to attempt to locate an address and mail a certified letter. Bottom line is to show a good faith effort was made to contact Seth. See a lawyer, but my guess is Seth's code is public domain by now. And if it isn't Seth seems to have no interest in it. Create an incorporated non-profit company, and transfer ownership of the new product with its new name to this company. copyright the new version as Open Source, give Seth credit as in Inspired by Lazarus created by Seth Whatshisname. Then publish the add-on. If Seth comes out of the woodwork, the worst that can happen is the new app must be taken down. No lawyer in his right mind would sue a non-profit corporation with no assets. |
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And I think it's unlikely that open source projects will ever reach that point |
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I am not a lawyer and all that, but: a copyrighted work does not become
public domain until the copyright term expires or the holder says so. It
doesn't matter if he's not answering mail or is deceased.
It is perfectly ok to say "hey we did all this work to make the thing
function in a new environment" and own *that,* and redistribute *that* work
under whatever licence.
The core thing still belongs to the original copyright holder and his
license though.
The other stuff about documenting the attempts to contact author and so on
I agree with. The group isn't big or cohesive enough to form a non-profit
organization. (At this point, in my opinion. Prove me wrong and I'll jump
for joy).
Really though our biggest problem right now is we don't have a coder "on
staff". Let's say we navigate the add-on licence gateway and get published.
Then what? Lazarus will get used and tested in thousands of new situations,
problems will be found, and people will start talking about them. A very
high proportion will be complaints. and we will only be able to act on or
remedy a very very few.
(responding to this last paragraph should be in a different thread. Not
sure if there's one started yet.)
My 2c
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Anyone want to start a real company and sell this thing? |
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Number-wise I think its a side job at the least. If someone develops it under Patron or Donorbox it might work. I am willing to contribute how management of the code if someone explains me how to get this repo to an xpi. |
As evidenced in the funding thread, #2, there's confusion over what an Open Source license is, and thus also what kind of licenses are possible for this Lazarus Form Recovery: Resurrected project.
Open Source - is a license certified by the Open Source Initiative as complying with the open source definition. It includes the well known names of Apache, GPL, MIT, X11, and so on. Read more: https://opensource.org/licenses
Lazarus Form Recovery - the extension our project is based on is not open source in the OSI sense. In the Mozilla Legacy AddOns catalog it is classed as
License: Custom (freeware).at least as far back as v2.0. Earlier versions may have been open source, but the point is moot, we started with 2.3.1 which is not open by the OSI definition.Changing the project's name, logo, user interaction style, and so on do not make our effort sufficiently different to be able to apply our own copyright and thereby our own license.
We do have the source code for Lazarus and that is the platform we stood on to to reboot it for the new Firefox WebExtensions plugin API, but availability of the code on it's own is not enough. The author Seth wagoner retains copyright and he could choose to re-assert that right at anytime, and we would have no choice but to pull down everything we've built.
My personal position: In my mind Seth has abandoned Lazarus and has no interest in what happens with it now. Several people including myself have tried repeatedly for years to contact him about Lazarus. I'm happy to continue contribute to the project with the understanding this could change at anytime at that my work may suddenly become unavailable to share. Not everyone will be comfortable with this, so this is their departure point - Live long and prosper. ;-)
I am not a lawyer and this could be all wrong etc. etc. I have however followed the open source movement for decades and read a lot of material on licensing. I believe the above is correct in the main, though perhaps not in the details -- though if I'm wrong, please speak up! I'd love to be not right here.
Ok, so what will it take to close this issue?
A simple clear statement or paragraph that can be posted in
License.txtat the root of this repository. It should cover the above, and whatever other salient points others bring up. I've no doubt missed a thing or two.The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: