[yt-dev] License switch: remove author tags

Tue Sep 10 14:05:55 PDT 2013

I have some amount of experience with, though please don't confuse that
with legal counsel.

So both J and Nathan correct.  The "yt collaboration" or "yt team" is not a
legal entity.  Because of the that copyright is held by the individual
contributors.  However, in the license document when you say "yt
collaboration" that is understood as "the authors."  Which is part of why
you should publish an author list.  However, what goes along with this is
that the individual authors are personally liable for the code.  This is
why having a license is important.  Open source license shield you from
liability because they explicitly state that they offer no warranty and the
user assumes the risk.  (And since it is software it is not as if someone
will accidentally cut off their hand or something...unless you are David
Beazley.)

That said, you have three basic options:

1. leave the license and liability and copyright where it is, with the
individual authors.
2. Communally decide to give one person copyright, they *are* a legal
entity,
3. Assign copyright to a neutral third party organization which is a legal
entity, e.g. NumFOCUS*, Software Freedom Conservancy, a University.

Note that issues related to this are only ever important if someone decides
to litigate or you want to trademark something.  For the overwhelming
majority of projects, these never happen.

Be Well
Anthony

* Note that this is part of why we started NumFOCUS.  Though I admit that
negotiating with the bigger projects on what a successful sponsorship
agreement looks like is taking longer than everyone would like.  We do hold
a few copyrights though currently.

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 10:49 PM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com>wrote:

> I believe you retain your copyright over your changes regardless of the
> author tags.  IANAL so if someone knows better please correct me.
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 1:43 PM, j s oishi <jsoishi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> +1 on removing author tags
>>
>> What do we do about the copyright? I mean, can we assign copyright to
>> "the yt collaboration" if the yt collaboration doesn't exist in a legal
>> sense?
>>
>> j
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Anthony Scopatz <scopatz at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hey Nathan,
>>>
>>> I think that this is generally good move.  Though I would encourage an
>>> authors page on the website which lists everyone who has contributed.
>>>
>>> Be Well
>>> Anthony
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > Matt,
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> I am +1 on removing the author tags.  That being said, I consciously
>>>> >> decided *not* to, for basically two reasons which are somewhat
>>>> >> related.  The first is that I think removing the author tags will
>>>> >> disproportionately impact individuals who perhaps have contributed
>>>> >> specific files or analysis modules but have not contributed a large
>>>> >> quantity of code to the overall base of yt.  The second reason is
>>>> >> really my main one: I don't want to be as strongly associated with yt
>>>> >> as I currently am.  Not because I don't have pride in it (I do), but
>>>> >> because I don't want people who aren't deep in the code development
>>>> to
>>>> >> believe that I'm the only person contributing, and I do not think
>>>> that
>>>> >> does favors for *anyone*.  (I still receive many emails off-list,
>>>> >> people say things to me that I have to correct about what yt is, etc
>>>> >> etc.)  It creates an impression of consolidation of responsibility,
>>>> as
>>>> >> well as undermines the credit that others receive for their
>>>> >> contributions.  Having names (that aren't mine) on source files
>>>> >> reduces the apparent consolidation.  I was leery of making such a
>>>> >> change, because removing names felt really wrong to me to do on my
>>>> >> own.
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> > I'd argue that the yt = matt turk misconception is made worse by the
>>>> author
>>>> > tags, since your name is on almost every file.
>>>>
>>>> Then let's get rid of them.
>>>>
>>>> >
>>>> >>
>>>> >> So, I'm fine with removing them if everyone else is too.  But I'd
>>>> also
>>>> >> like to trade this for having some type of mechanism for public
>>>> >> recognition of efforts.  (In addition to another paper, which is
>>>> >> probably still a bit off.)  Perhaps something like a core team, or
>>>> >> list of contributors, on the website?  Something that can be pointed
>>>> >> to, put on a CV, anything.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Very much agreed.  I'd follow what the IPython project does, a list
>>>> of core
>>>> > contributors on the website and list of *all* contributors for each
>>>> release:
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/stable/about/license_and_copyright.html
>>>> > http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/stable/whatsnew/github-stats-1.0.html
>>>>
>>>> I like this a lot.
>>>>
>>>> I've mentioned in IRC a few times that I'd like to re-do the homepage.
>>>>  If anyone wants to work on that, I'd be totally game.  I think having
>>>> something based on bootstrap with the "slate" theme might be nice; I
>>>> started sketching out something the other day.  One option would be to
>>>> move the *entire* homepage to Sphinx and just have a nice template for
>>>> the front page, similar to what IPython and others do.
>>>>
>>>> >
>>>> > Cheers,
>>>> >
>>>> > Nathan
>>>> >
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