cloudflare/zlib on OS X

[Lawrence Velázquez]

I am not a lawyer. The following does not constitute legal advice, and even if it's entirely true, it might only apply to United States copyright law. Talk to a lawyer if you keep one around, and don't forget to water it.


On Jun 1, 2015, at 8:52 PM, René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday June 01 2015 18:00:29 Lawrence Velázquez wrote:
> 
>> Where do they explicitly license their contributions under the zlib license?
> 
> They don't explicitly change the licensing of the files they modify. If those files each carry a zlib license they will still carry that license after applying the patch.

I don't think that's how it works. Copyright applies to content, not "files".

They added new code and thus created new content. As the copyright holders on that content, they need to explicitly state that they are licensing it under the zlib license for others to use. This could be as simple as adding comments that claim copyright and declare licensing terms (e.g., "Copyright (C) 2015 CloudFlare, Inc. For conditions of distribution and use, see copyright notice in zlib.h"). As far as I can see, they didn't even bother to do that.


> CloudFlare are the only ones who could accuse someone of stealing their code, applying the wrong license etc. I forwarded a statement from a CloudFlare employee using his work address that they didn't change a license. What more could you want?!

Unless that employee is CloudFlare's legal counsel, it doesn't matter what he says. He probably doesn't even hold the copyright to the code he wrote.


vq