From:	C. Garrett Goebel	Date:	Wed Apr 26 19:40:40 2006
Subject:	compilation copyright

Audrey Tang's recent blog entry mentions her decision to move Pugs away
from Artistic 2 licensing because of Artistic 2 compilation copyright
licensing conflicts between inclusion of Pugs source into Perl6/Artistic2
and Pugs's inclusion of LGPL code in its source tree.

It sounds like the motivation behind Artistic 2 is benevolent. But Audrey
specifically mentions compilation copyrights. I don't understand the
implications of how compilation copyrights pan out with respect to the
Artistic 2 license, the Perl 6 distribution as a whole, and the
inclusion of 3rd party contributions using public domain or different
copyleft licenses.

Q1: Could you explain why the inclusion of LGPL code into an otherwise
Artistic2 source tree is legally dangerous?

Q2: Does a compilation copyright exist if it isn't asserted or registered?

Q3: Why does TPF or any open source project need a "compilation
copyright"? I.e. why aren't the copyrights on the contributed works
enough?

On the perl6-internals list back in October 2005, Allision Randal wrote:
>
> So, with Perl 5, Larry is the compilation owner. The problem with that
> is it makes Larry personally liable for any action brought against
> Perl

Q4: Where is Larry attributed as the compilation owner?

Q5: What legal liabilites would contributors be protected from if TPF
holds compilation copyrights for Perl?

Q6: How well are contribution copyrights respected internationally?

cheers,

Garrett