[m-rev.] www for review: Update contributions page and the list of developers.

[Paul Bone]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 11:57:48AM +1100, Paul Bone wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 07:15:31PM +1100, Paul Bone wrote:
> > For review by anyone.
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > Update contributions page and the list of developers.
> > 
> 
> As there is no review yet I've seperated the simplier parts of this patch
> and I will commit them.  I've attached the reamining changes that await a
> review.
> 

I've committed this change.  I can address any issues post-commit.


> From 86ab0d430c22cd399e1f5bc9050e9df18f60f9eb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Paul Bone <paul at bone.id.au>
> Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 11:47:57 +1100
> Subject: [PATCH 4/4] Update contributions page and the list of developers.
> 
> Copyright assignment is unnecessary and impractical for Mercury.  We have
> only inconsistently applied this policy in the past.  Additionally
> relicensing is intractable at this point and therefore copyright assignment
> is not useful, and only serves to confuse potential developers.
> 
> This change removes the discussion of copyright assignment and relicensing
> from Mercury's website.  Now this page states that we simply maintain a list
> of all the developers and their employers (where applicable).
> 
> Also remove references to public domain as it's legally ambiguous (highly
> dependent on jurisdiction).
> 
> development/include/contributions.inc:
>     As above.
> ---
>  development/include/contributions.inc | 35 +++++++++++++----------------------
>  1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/development/include/contributions.inc b/development/include/contributions.inc
> index dd9704c..63e93ab 100644
> --- a/development/include/contributions.inc
> +++ b/development/include/contributions.inc
> @@ -23,9 +23,8 @@ Something that meets the open source definition would be good
>  (see <a href="http://www.opensource.org">www.opensource.org</a>).
>  A pre-written license is always much easier to get right than rolling
>  your own.  The LGPL and GPL licenses are pretty compatible with the rest
> -of the Mercury distribution.  The Artistic, BSD-like (without
> -advertising clause) and plain old public domain (e.g. no copyright at
> -all) are also pretty popular.
> +of the Mercury distribution.  The Artistic, and BSD-like (without
> +advertising clause) licenses are also pretty popular.
>  </li>
>  <li>
>  Apply this license to your code (e.g. make sure your source
> @@ -62,27 +61,19 @@ archives of this list, simply to get an idea of the kinds of standards
>  required for integrating code into the main distribution.
>  </p>
>  <p>
> -There is an issue with copyright ownership in the Mercury system. 
> -We'd like to retain the freedom to modify the license of the
> -Mercury system in future releases (in particular, we may decide to
> -dual-license the Mercury system so as to make it compatible with other
> -open source licenses out there).  Doing this with hundreds of copyright
> -holders is practically impossible, since you need the agreement of every
> -single one of them to make changes.
> +Rather than listing many authors in the header of each source file it is
> +better to refer to all the authors as a group.
> +Therefore in the header of each source file the copyright is assigned to
> +"The Mercury Team" (since 2013), and list the authors individually on the
> +<a href="people.html">authors page</a>.
>  </p>
>  <p>
> -Under the current license you are free to make any modifications
> -you like and distribute them.  However we ask that if you want your
> -modifications to be merged back into the main line of development, you
> -talk to us about this issue.  The easiest solution is to place your
> -changes into the public domain (e.g. give up copyright ownership on
> -them) and then we can merge them into the main compiler.  This is a nice
> -simple mechanism for getting around the hundreds of authors problem.
> -If you have an employer who has some control over your copyright, we
> -have some standard documents for doing this kind of thing.  It is almost
> -always preferable to ask an employer to sign a form than to try to explain
> -the concept (possibly confusing or scaring them in the process).  Please 
> -email us if you want to discuss contributing changes to the Mercury system.
> +Note that if you contribute to Mercury as part of your occupation your
> +employer may own the copyright on your work.
> +In these cases you should talk with your employer about contributing to
> +Mercury.
> +We list organisations that have contributed to Mercury on the
> +<a href="people.html">authors page</a>.
>  </p>
>  
>  
> -- 
> 2.1.1
> 

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-- 
Paul Bone