Re: [gnu.org #44560] relicensing some code of texi2html

On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 06:16:46PM -0400, FSF General Contact Address via RT wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 11:37:43AM -0400, Dumas Patrice via RT wrote:
> > I am a contributor to texi2html located at texi2html.cvshome.org. The
> > FSF is the copyright holder for that program. I send that mail because
> > I would like to obtain the permission from the FSF to relicence
> > some code currently under the GPL to public domain.
> 
> Dear Dumas,
> 
> I am very sorry for the late response to this message.  Since we are a
> non-profit with very limited resources, messages to this address often get
> backlogged, and we are always struggling to catch up.

No problem.

> I have spoken with our executive director about your request, and we are
> considering it.  I want to be sure I understand your request properly
> before we proceed.  My understanding is that your first attachment,
> texi2html.gpled (821 lines), is the one which contains code currently
> released under the GNU General Public License that you would like to see
> released into the public domain.  Please let me know whether or not this is
> correct.

In fact, things are a lot more complicated... A few days ago I send a mail
to Karl Berry, because I thought he was the one who made the decision to 
give the copyright to the FSF. But it turned out that he never told about
that to the FSF, and that the FSF never knew nor agreed to become copyright 
holder. Thus he told me to remove the FSF from the copyright and instead
give it to the former author. The next trouble is that the author, Olaf 
Bachman, (who thought the copyright holder was the FSF...) doesn't seem to 
answer to the mails. I cut and paste here an excerpt of the exchange we had
with Karl (this is a response of he to me, my text is indented):

========================================================================
    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.

I haven't received any replies recently (last few months) from Olaf
either, in response to a couple of random queries.

    This is a very complicated copyrighted issue, but I believe I have
    to be ok ;-).

Yes, me too :).

    Before we(I?) change the copyright holders

Yes, I think this is the right thing to do, although a question that
comes to mind is who to change it *to*.

I hereby disclaim copyright interest on the minor changes I made, so you
don't have to worry about that, at least.

If you don't get a response from Olaf, perhaps the simplest thing to do
is just make the whole thing public domain, and thus avoid the whole
question of who owns the copyright :).

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

I think that will just confuse them.  Since makeinfo generates html now
(as you well know), I can't imagine rms would want to accept texi2html
as GNU software, and as far as I know they don't want to hold copyright
on anything that isn't GNU.

Hope this helps, though I fear it doesn't :).

k
========================================================================== 

> In the meantime, I ask that you revert the violating changes out of CVS as
> soon as possible, and let me know once you have done so.  We do take
> violations of the license on our code very seriously, and do not want
> someone checking out the repository to mistakenly believe that GPL'ed code
> is in the public domain.

In the mean time, I have also found a very old release which has another 
copyright notice. Most of the code I need is there too. However I am not 
certain how I can interpret it... I will try to ask on the development 
mailing list.

In summary it seems that the FSF is not really concerned by that as a 
copyright holder, contrary to what I thought first. However I believe the
the FSF is always concerned by GPL violations ;-).

Best regards,

Pat