[LAD] Licenses and copyright attribution (was Re: Impro-Visor created on sourceforge)

On Saturday, August 8, 2009, Chris Cannam wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Raymond Martin wrote:
> > On Saturday 08 August 2009 13:25:09 you wrote:
> >> I know this sort of thing is easily overlooked, but it's probably
> >> illegal and certainly unethical to redistribute someone else's work
> >> without attribution (a basic necessity of copyright which the GPL
> >> doesn't disclaim).
> >
> > No it is not illegal at all. The only things required are those in the
> > GPL, nothing else matters.
>
> Copyright law does; after all, that's the only thing that makes the
> GPL work. But I'm happy to admit that I'm quite unclear on this
> point, namely whether it's technically legal (even if offensively bad
> form) to redistribute binaries of a GPL'd work without any of the
> attribution that is required in redistributing the source code. I'd
> be interested in any more information about this. (Preferably not
> from you -- you've asserted too many wrong or disputable opinions as
> if they were fact for me to give any credibility to anything you write
> -- but other citations would be of interest.)

There is not a single "copyright law", but as many laws as countries. But if
you mean that the copyright attribution is a requirement from the Berne
Convention, I think that you may be right.

"Copyright. Examples and explanations", by Stephen M. McJohn. Page 262
http://books.google.com/books?id=Gq9VbEQnxaQC&lpg=PA262&pg=PA262

Anyway, the GPL license does not explicitly require the attribution, unlike
some other licenses like BSD and CC-By. Why should be explicitly required if
it were a right granted by the law applicable in any state?

The undeniable fact is that failing to properly recognize the authorship of
some work is very ugly, and people showing such disrespect is a candidate for
public blame. I'm not talking about you. In my experience when I've
contributed to some project, I've almost always been credited. I'm not going
to sue anybody that failed to do so, but they risk to face public
embarrassment some day.

Regards,
Pedro
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Received on Sun Aug 9 20:15:03 2009