Posts and replies

@micr0 @esm TOS cannot transfer copyright, the reason the FSF (who sucks) requires a hand-signed contract (i actually think they accept email now) for gnu contributors is bc that means the contributors can't decide to later enforce their copyright e.g. to stop the project from later changing the license (GPLv3 encourages the "or any later version" clause for related reasons). this is well established by legal precedent

@micr0 @esm i'm not sure what happens if i contribute code to a repo, then later decide i want to enforce my copyright and demand they remove it. i would hope that a code contribution implicitly establishes indemnification of other contributors against infringement as the code contribution is then considered to be part of a combined work as opposed to a distinct work. this is why the list of contributors is more than just nice, it also describes (but does not define) the owners of the copyright for that work (who then have standing to make an infringement claim)

@micr0 @esm this is about art which is licensed and made differently but it uses the term "joint work" for what i called a combined work https://lawyersalliance.org/userFiles/uploads/legal_alerts/Joint_Collective_and_Derivative_Works_Legal_Alert.pdf there are other legal classifications for works with multiple authors (like a poetry anthology) but a "derivative work" is what happens if you depend on another package in your own package and this is why license compatibility across a dependency graph matters because if you depend on some code with an incompatible license then some uses of your derivative work can be infringing and i believe it is considered infringement to distribute your work at all with an incompatible license even if nobody uses it incorrectly