Re: [[email protected]: relicensing some code of texi2html]

Hi Karl,

> I was indeed the one who put the FSF as the copyright owner of texi2html
> during the brief time when I maintained it, but that was just wrong.  I
> never actually talked to anyone at the FSF about it.

Arg... This doesn't really simplify things... 
 
> The people you really need to check with are Lionel Cons and Olaf
> Bachmann, since they are the ones who actually wrote the thing.  I did
> not do a lot with it, just fixed a few bugs that were annoying me when
> Lionel said he didn't have time any more.

I think that I don't really need Lionel consent as it seems that he only
retains intellectual property of his work, which seems to mean that he
doesn't want to be copyright holder (from the simple license found in
texi2html which can be found at ctan in the same directory than texinfo).

And from what you says (and what I can see in the changelog) most of
what I want was made by Olaf Bachman. The bad news is that he doesn't 
seem to respond to mails.

> Also, please change the copyright statement to be the three of you.
> No need to include to me :).

Credit to the authors is given in the AUTHORS file (and I am sorry, but 
I don't think you are going to be removed ;-):
[dumas@hermes texi2html]$ cat AUTHORS 
Lionel Cons, Karl Berry, Olaf Bachmann, Karl-Heinz Marbaise (texi2html
manual) and many others.
[dumas@hermes texi2html]$ 

But copyright holding is quite a different thing. I think that having the FSF
as copyright holder would have simplified things as the FSF can protect
the license and also it is more simple for relicensing to have just one
contact, and lastly the FSF is likely not to disappear soon, nor stop
doing free software. However if you say that the FSF isn't really the 
copyright holder, then there is trouble.

> Ok?

This is a very complicated copyrighted issue, but I believe I have to be 
ok ;-). Before we(I?) change the copyright holders, I will send a mail to 
Olaf, I hope he will respond, and I will also send this mail to the texi2html
devel list. And also note that I am not the texi2html maintainer, Derek Robert 
Price <[email protected]> is the maintainer, but lately I am the principal 
contributor...

Maybe I could also ask the FSF whether they want to be the copyright holder ?

Pat