[Savannah-hackers-public] [gnu.org #250073] wikimedia, make a fork and the GPL

[Dave Turner via RT]

> [sebastian - Mon Aug 22 15:03:21 2005]:
> 
> Hello Dave(?). :-)
> 
> 
> Another problem:
> wikimedia (powered by SF.net) was released under the GNU GPL, but
> lacks any information about license + copyright.
> The project has got a COPYING file, but any source file lacks
> these notices.
> 
> Now oklahoma
> (https://savannah.gnu.org/task/index.php?func=detailitem&item_id=4542)
> wants to make a "fork" (or at least something like that -> "derivative
> work").
> 
> But if he wants to copy /all/ files from wikimedia and then work on
> this, he had to insert license/copyright/permission-to-copy 
> statements.
>
> But he also had to protect the rights of the original author(s).
> Here we have got a problem.
> 
> 
> Because of the insert GPL in COPYING we can assume that *all* files
> were published
> under the GPL? So he can insert GPL license stuff at top of each file
> of source code?

Yes.

> Can we also assume that the pictures were published under the GPL?

Sure.

> And what about the copyright stuff? How does he know where the
> original author is of a file? Or can we assign all copyright per 
> default to the Wikimedia project?

You could check CVS logs, or just leave that blank.

-- 
-Dave "Novalis" Turner
GPL Compliance Engineer
Free Software Foundation