On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 09:34:58PM +0300, Aleksey Cheusov wrote: [...] > For more than 15 years of existense nobody > marked their changes with proper copyright notice. That's a mistake. > If I understand correctly "no explicit license" == "public domain" > by default. That's a very wrong assumption to make. Without licence, the copyright law describes what you can do with a computer program (or any other piece of art). That's essentially nothing but the ability to look at it in most countries (and of course doesn't allow distribution, because you can't copy it). The copyright law (in the case of that code, the US copyright law) is what prevails; a licence can only allow a licensee to do more than what the law allows, but cannot add restrictions beyond it. For that you need a contract. Now, trying to be pragmatic, it'd be safe to assume those files are covered by a variant of the BSD licence, but you'll have to ask all the significant authors you can find (using CVS history). The same goes as to who to give copyright to. Hopefully the list will be small enough. -- Quentin Garnier - cube%cubidou.net@localhost - cube%NetBSD.org@localhost "See the look on my face from staying too long in one place [...] every time the morning breaks I know I'm closer to falling" KT Tunstall, Saving My Face, Drastic Fantastic, 2007.
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