Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: joining the Software Freedom Conservancy

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Sun, 2007-07-22 at 12:49 -0600, Ryan Hill wrote:
> Marius Mauch wrote:
> > While I think this would be an excellent move, there are a few topics
> > that concern me a bit:
> > 1) just to be sure, did someone check the transfer agreement between the
> > Foundation and the old Gentoo, Inc for potential problems?
> > 2) what would this mean for our copyright situation? In detail:
> > a) who would (legally) own the copyright?
> > b) what would (in theory) be involved if we'd want to enforce/change
> > the license?
> > c) if the copyright were owned by the Conservancy, would we have to
> > change our copyright headers (in existing and/or new files)?
>
> It might be worth noting that it appears that Gentoo would be the first
> distribution to join.  I'd be interested in knowing if the SFC considers
> distributing closed-source or proprietary software (nero, ati/nvidia
> drivers, vmware) to be "producing non-free software (as per the
> Conservancy's charitable purpose)" as mentioned in section 2(b) of their
> notes.  Paragraph 2(a) seems to prohibit it.
>
> > a. The Project Will Be Free Software.  The Conservancy and the Project agree that
> >    any software distributed by the Project will be distributed solely as Free Software.
>
> If that's not a problem I think this is a great idea.

Well, we'd be the second distribution, as Debian uses the SFC.  Also,
realize that we've already gone through all of this with the SFC and
wouldn't even be bringing it up as an option if the SFC hadn't already
approved us.  They are aware of the state of our tree and that we do
ship *ebuilds* for proprietary software.  Remember that we don't
distribute closed-source software, we distribute *ebuilds* for said
software.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation