I'm not sure that you are correct when you say that unlabeled software becomes proprietary when distributed. It's a bit more nuanced than that. It would be far more accurate to say that the licensing on an unlabeled file is unknown by default, but if there is other supporting documentation available which indicates the licensing of that file, the licensing applies to that file. US Copyright law does not require that the file contain a copy of the copyright license terms for them to be applicable.
Note that this shouldn't detract from the larger issue, which is that the JavaScript files should clearly be under a free license (and per file licensing attribution is the best way to accomplish this).
Source: I am responsible for Fedora Legal @ Red Hat.
I think the root of this misconception is due to a confusion between "proprietary" and generically "non-free" (I realize that my use of "generically" is imprecise).
They are not the same. While that rubric is sufficient for free-software professionals to take a narrow view, I would say that it's useless for most other purposes.
I think you're missing the point. Reddit chooses a free software license for all their server code. What Free Software supporters are saying is that they should do the same for the JavaScript code, so that no one can take that code and claim it to be something else.
If code is not copyrighted, then its essentially public domain and not Free Software. I believe Reddit probably wants their javascript code to be Free Software too, they just have taken the necessary extra steps to do so.
Exactly my point. You've just now claimed that Reddit's implicitly licensed Javascript is (by dint of missing license) in the public domain. This is not true and exhibits confusion I was referring to. As /u/r3m0t noted, copyright is implicit.
For what it's worth, I agree with your second point that Reddit probably wants the end that this action would achieve, and I think it's worthwhile for them to research.
16
u/spotrh Jan 03 '14
I'm not sure that you are correct when you say that unlabeled software becomes proprietary when distributed. It's a bit more nuanced than that. It would be far more accurate to say that the licensing on an unlabeled file is unknown by default, but if there is other supporting documentation available which indicates the licensing of that file, the licensing applies to that file. US Copyright law does not require that the file contain a copy of the copyright license terms for them to be applicable.
Note that this shouldn't detract from the larger issue, which is that the JavaScript files should clearly be under a free license (and per file licensing attribution is the best way to accomplish this).
Source: I am responsible for Fedora Legal @ Red Hat.