2011/2/6 Xyne <xyne@archlinux.ca>:
What is the legal status of files submitted to the AUR? I have always assumed that anything uploaded to the AUR is automatically licensed under the GPL or something similar, in the same way that content contributed to the wiki is.
Ownership and authorship aren't the same. In the first place the GPL lisence requires the copyright notice to exist. It is actually based on authorship, the first line is a copyright notice. And there is nothing bad about it. Anyway atributing the work is a good thing. Good people atributive the works of their friends. Of course, if you revise the code in a not superficial way you also have some authorship in that piece of code, then it's a team work. Or... you can interpret that the buildscript are Public Domain, then Arch, TU, IBM, Apple etc., all can use it without atributing anything. But since it is only useful for Arch users in the end... it is the same thing in practice.