Samba Copyright Policy

The Samba Team has a policy of asking for contributions to be made under the personal copyright of the contributor, instead of a corporate copyright.

There are three reasons for the establishment of this policy:

1. Individual copyrights make copyright registration in the US a simpler process.
2. If Samba is copyrighted by individuals rather than corporations, decisions regarding enforcement and protection of copyright will, more likely, be made in the interests of the project, and not in the interests of any corporation's shareholders.
3. If we ever need to relicense a portion of the code -- as has happened in the past with making tdb and ldb LGPL -- contacting individuals for permission to do so is much easier than contacting a company, especially in the case of companies that have moved on and no longer have an interest in Samba.