Gentoo Archives: gentoo-nfp

From: Luca Barbato <lu_zero@g.o>
To: gentoo-nfp@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Soliciting Feedback: Gentoo Copyright Assignments / Licensing
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:33:00
Message-Id: 50CF654E.9080305@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Soliciting Feedback: Gentoo Copyright Assignments / Licensing by Alec Warner
1 On 12/17/2012 06:47 PM, Alec Warner wrote:
2 >> Moot point once you go over the country border, for each country and each
3 >> border.
4 >
5 > I believe Rich means legal simplicity from the Foundation's point of
6 > view. If the Foundation were to re-license, we would have to contact
7 > all contributors. That is complex and a lot of work, so that avenue is
8 > basically never available. Plus we have to do it every time we take a
9 > similar action. If we had some sort of agreement, that would be a
10 > one-time deal per contributor, and it would make it 'legally simpler'
11 > for the Foundation to do these things.
12
13 Yet, as said many times, USA is not the world and Germany has a quite
14 different way to handle this stuff, to name a nation with lots of
15 contributors.
16
17 > I actually think copyright *assignment* is the wrong term to use. In
18 > general I like what Google does for their open source work. You keep
19 > your copyright on your work, but grant the entity (Google in this
20 > case) a worldwide license to do whatever they want (or in the
21 > Foundations case, a license to do some limited things that the
22 > Foundation wants to make their lives easier.) I'm not saying that is
23 > what the Foundation is planning; but at least it is the most appealing
24 > to me.
25
26 That is what you can do at best.
27
28
29 lu