Automated Wrapper Generation with Clasp

[Faheem Mitha]

Hi Georgiy (and everyone else),

On Wed, 24 Jun 2015, Georgiy Tugai wrote:

> (3) Multiple high-profile projects have run into copyright issues in the 
> past; I believe that most of these stemmed from actions which legally 
> require the consent of all contributors (who have contributed anything 
> over 10 lines of code or equivalent) --- for example, relicensing from 
> GPL to LGPL --- in combination with past contributors being out of 
> contact for one reason or another, so their consent cannot be obtained.

Yes, this was something I mentioned in my message earlier today. I know a 
little bit about this, because I helped the Mercurial project track down 
some old contributors in 2009. They needed to change their license from 
GPL2 to GPL2+, I think. I forgot why exactly.

Anyway, some of those old contributors, dating from like 2005, were never 
tracked down. I remember going to considerable effort to try to locate 
someone from Singapore who was one of Mercurial's earliest significant 
contributors as of 2005, but without success. However, I believe they 
changed the license anyway.

See also https://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Relicensing

I thought (and said earlier) that Mercurial requested a copyright 
assignment from contributors, but I think I must have been mistaken. I see 
no signs of this. However, that does not make it a bad idea for the Clasp 
project,

It is worth noting that the legal umbrella for the Mercurial project is 
the Software Freedom Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/), loosely 
affiliated with the FSF (Bradley Kuhn is associated with both 
organizations in a senior capacity). Presumably the Conservancy advises 
them on such issues.

Chris, I'd recommend talking to them at some point. They could be a useful 
resource on legal matters.

                                                      Regards, Faheem Mitha