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Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 06:11:02 +0100
From: Romain Raboin <romain.raboin@...il.com>
To: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
Cc: john-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: copyright and license statements
It's OK for me.
> Romain, magnum -
>
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 06:02:03AM +0100, magnum wrote:
>> On 01/11/2012 05:36 AM, Solar Designer wrote:
>> > When you make non-trivial changes to source files that I or someone else
>> > wrote, you become a copyright holder to those derived works. So, yes,
>> > you can claim copyright, and I (and/or other authors) remain copyright
>> > holders as well. You don't have to document what exactly your copyright
>> > applies to (which portions of the source file), but doing so is helpful.
>>
>> I'll revise my statements. Here is an example:
>>
>> /* HTTP Digest access authentication patch for john
>> *
>> * Written by Romain Raboin - romain.raboin at gmail.com
>> *
>> + * OMP and intrinsics support: Copyright magnum 2012 and hereby
>> + * released to the general public under the following terms:
>> + *
>> + * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
>> + * modification, is permitted.
>> */
>>
>> The original file had no statements at all, but my added statements just
>> applies to my changes. Does this make sense?
>
> Not quite. We need Romain's explicit permission to place his code under
> that license - and then we'll apply the license to the entire thing,
> including your changes. Romain - is this OK with you? Or better yet,
> can you send us a patch changing the "Written by" to "Copyright" (and
> year written) and adding the words "Redistribution and use in source and
> binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted." ? Please do.
>
> Indeed, it is also possible and helpful to add informative comments on
> who wrote what in that file, but they should preferably be outside of
> the copyright + license statement (as long as we use the permissive
> license above, so we should have no need to ask an individual copyright
> holder to re-license their portion of the contribution).
>
> In case Romain does not grant this license (or a suitable alternative),
> it appears that if the set of JtR formats is considered a "collective
> work", then we may still keep and redistribute Romain's contribution as
> part of JtR, but our abilities to potentially reuse the code differently
> are close to non-existent (very bad):
>
> http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html
>
> "In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any rights
> under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is presumed to
> have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and distributing the
> contribution as part of that particular collective work, any revision of
> that collective work, and any later collective work in the same series."
>
> http://www.ivanhoffman.com/derivative3.html
>
> "A collective work is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or
> encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate
> and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective
> whole."
>
> Alternatively, since JtR was available to Romain under GNU GPLv2 (and no
> other license), which requires derivative works to also fall under that
> license, it can be said that if his contribution is a "derivative work",
> then it is under GNU GPLv2. However, that does not leave me the
> flexibility for re-licensing of JtR that I'd prefer to have.
>
> It is not obvious to me which case applies and whether this choice is up
> to me or not. Also, things may vary by jurisdiction.
>
> Overall, we're on thin ice with not explicitly licensed contributions
> like this, so we need explicit licenses - like I requested above.
>
> Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Alexander
--
Romain Raboin
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