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The GNU project states that if a person contributes less than 15 lines of code to a project, their contributions are not "legally significant for copyright purposes".

Say there is a Web app project that uses the Bootstrap library. One of the contributors to the Web app project has merged just 1 pull request, with only 2 changes. The following was removed from style.css:

body {
    padding: 2rem 0;
}

And in index.html, <body> is changed to <body class="my-4">.

Would this contribution be considered 1 line of code (if only including additions in the count), or 4 lines of code (including the sum of the additions and subtractions)?

In this scenario, the original author of the Web app project neglected to add a license to the repository, technically making it proprietary. The author seeks permission from all the contributors to re-license the code under a free license like the MIT (Expat), but some of them (including the above contributor) never responds. If the number of lines from each contributors totals to less than 15 lines, then assuming that the GNU project's counsel is correct, the author can change the repository license to the MIT (Expat) without committing copyright infringement.

P.S. This question bears some similarities to the "Can there be a copyright on negative code?" question, but that question is more general and does not take into account the issue of counting source lines of code.

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    The GNU source you are referencing makes it clear that this "15 lines" guideline is an approximation only. It seems to be the GNU project's guidelines for whether they will accept something without "copyright papers" or not. I.e., if the contribution in question is a non-bug report and is more than "around" 15 lines "or so", then GNU are requiring copyright papers (for putting it into the GNU version). Otherwise, you probably can get away with putting it into a GNU project repository even without that, but I don't read this as a recommendation for non-GNU projects.
    – Brandin
    Commented Mar 4 at 12:41
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    It's probably not your question, but I suspect they have this kind of guideline for convenience, in order to allow some kinds of contributions like typo-fixes, small performance improvements, and so on, without having a heavy procedure required for that. Their case is a bit different from what you've outlined here, though, because presumably the person submitting the "insignificant" diffs to the GNU project (i.e. without signing copyright papers) is still fully aware of from the outset the license requirement to do that (GPL). So it's probably still more or less "safe" for them to include.
    – Brandin
    Commented Mar 4 at 12:45
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    From the Bootstrap documentation, it seems that "my-2" means to set a vertical padding of 2rem on the top and bottom, whereas "my-4" means to do the same, with the value 4rem. So effectively the change here sets "my-2" as a default, but then overrides a particular body in the index.html to use a larger padding value (by using the Bootstrap "my-4" class). Personally I would just drop these changes and then reimplement such tweaking later if needed, perhaps in a different way, preferably without changing the Bootstrap defaults, since that's going to be a maintenance hazard later.
    – Brandin
    Commented Mar 5 at 9:41
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    In Boostrap, my-2 means "vertical margin", and py-2 would mean "vertical padding", so the default set here seems equivalent to me to "py-2". If you want "py-2" applied in addition to "my-4", an alternative seems to be to just use the official Bootstrap classes as is: <body class="py-2 my-4">. Later on, if you notice that you are reusing that combination often enough in elements, you can refactor it later into a custom class if you want.
    – Brandin
    Commented Mar 5 at 9:50

2 Answers 2

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It's true that the GNU project says that (thanks, Brandin!), but even they don't seem to be entirely sure about it. They write:

A change of just a few lines (less than 15 or so) is not legally significant for copyright.

just after

If a person contributes more than around 15 lines of code and/or text that is legally significant for copyright purposes

The "or" in the above clause allows for the existence of things that are fifteen or fewer lines long but also legally significant for copyright.

Yes, copyright law does acknowledge the de minimis work - something sufficiently small and/or lacking in originality that it doesn't qualify for copyright protection - but it doesn't generally have a brightline test like "15 LoC". Neither the Berne Convention nor my country's copyright law have such a test. Stanford Law Centre notes that there is no bright-line test for a de minimis defence in the US, furthermore suggesting that something as short as five words may well qualify for copyright protection, if it forms the "heart of the work".

So whether you count the contribution above as one, four, or some other number of lines of code is a decision you can make however you like, because there's no bright-line test for a de minimis contribution.

I confess to not entirely following what you write next (I can't tell whether you're the author, or the contributor, and of/to what), so it's hard to say how this applies to your specific case. If you're the principal author of a codebase that has used a library with uncertain licensing status, well, you've made a world of trouble for yourself. If you're the principal author of a library that accepted contributions from third-parties without a clear licence or CLA in place, well, you've made a world of trouble for yourself.

Answering the specific question asked:

If the number of lines from each contributors totals to less than 15 lines, then assuming that the GNU project's counsel is correct, the author can change the repository license to the MIT (Expat) without committing copyright infringement.

There's no clear answer. If you're the person with write privileges to the codebase, you can change the licence. Whether any contributor will object to this, we can't say. If they do, and they're angry enough to involve lawyers, then you'll get to make your de minimis argument in court. Whether you'll prevail, we can't say.

If you're the principal author of a codebase under a copyleft licence, you're accepting contributions, and you wish to retain the ability to relicence in the future, the most solid, reliable advice we can give you is that you should clarify all this in a CLA, and require a completed CLA from any contributor.

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    It seems to be from this: gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html The statement in question seems to be "A change of just a few lines (less than 15 or so) is not legally significant for copyright." however it mentions in the same paragraph that a series of small changes that, on their own, are insignificant, can add up to a significant one.
    – Brandin
    Commented Mar 4 at 7:40
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    @Brandin thanks for the pointer, nice piece of digging. Yeah, they present it without any justification, so I regard that as more of an internal guideline.
    – MadHatter ♦
    Commented Mar 4 at 8:06
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    @MadHatter: After briefly skimming 6.1 (the section before the one about "legally significant changes"), it looks like they're using this 15-line rule as a means of determining who has to sign a CLA and who can just have their patch merged with no formalities. I'm not 100% convinced that's a great idea, but they can run their project as they see fit.
    – Kevin
    Commented Mar 4 at 16:50
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    Agreed; as I said, an internal guideline.
    – MadHatter ♦
    Commented Mar 4 at 16:51
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    Presumably <15-lines was what the FSF lawyers decided they could defend. So its not a legal principle, just a practical decision by that one organization.
    – T.E.D.
    Commented Mar 4 at 17:23
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You don’t get copyright for lines, you get copyright for creativity. So changing the right border of 30 items by 5 points has very little creativity, while changing three borders by different amounts has more creativity.

They can say that usually 16 or more lines changed are creative enough to produce copyright, and fifteen or fewer lines are not, but that is not an iron rule that you can always rely on. You’d have to look at the actual change. And if there is a legal disagreement hope you concluded the same way as a judge or expert witness.

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