Copyright issues re Debian website

[Bruce Perens]

Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> But, the full bit of text I quoted does say that you need the unanimous
> agreement of every single contributor
Yes. Sun reiterates the same simplistic view of the issue that has been 
repeated elsewhere.

If this were true, then a collective work of 1000 copyright holders 
would have a problem relicensing if they could just not find ONE person. 
That person may have died intestate, may have left the copyright in the 
hands of a state government or some other holder who has no idea that 
the copyright exists and has no reasonable means to exercise their 
rights as copyright holder.

And it's entirely absurd that the other 999 producers of a collective 
work would be permanently impeded by this fact. IMO, a reasonable 
process to get around this exists and /can be used,/ but is not 
currently backed up by an affirmative statement in law or case law. This 
isn't unusual. There is a lot of stuff that we do that has no 
affirmative statement in law behind it, but goes unchallenged. For 
example, there is no affirmative statement in the law that allows an 
author to deliberately place a work in the public domain.

    Thanks

    Bruce
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