Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] GLEP 76: Copyright Policy

[NP-Hardass]

On 06/11/2018 01:07 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 12:25 PM NP-Hardass <NP-Hardass@g.o> wrote:
>>
>> On 06/10/2018 04:34 PM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>
>>> Copyright Attribution
>>> ---------------------
>>>
>>> All files included in Gentoo projects must contain an appropriate
>>> copyright notice, as defined by this policy.
>>>
>>> A proper copyright notice appears near the top of the file, and reads::
>>>
>>>     Copyright YEARS LARGEST-CONTRIBUTOR [OTHER-CONTRIBUTORS] and others
>>>
>>> The largest contributor is whatever entity owns copyright to some
>>> portion of the largest number of lines in the file.  Additional
>>> contributors can be listed, but this is neither required nor
>>> recommended.  The "and others" text may be omitted if the explicitly
>>> listed contributors hold copyright to the entire file.
>>
>> Why is this not recommended?
>
> So, I came up with this to try to keep it as simple as possible.
>
> My concern was basically analogous to the BSD advertising clause
> problem.  If you start accumulating authors on this line then it gets
> unwieldy.  How do you draw the line?
>
> I suggested drawing the line at whoever touched the most lines, mainly
> because it is simple.
>
> IMO ANY solution is going to be imperfect, so simple trumps all.
>
> But, it certainly isn't the only possible solution to this problem.
>
> Keep in mind that notice is not the same as
> authorship/copyright/credit/etc.  The "and others" is important.
> Being #2 doesn't in any way diminish your rights under the law.  The
> law simply requires a notice, so we need to come up with one.  It
> shouldn't be viewed as "this is the only important contributor to this
> file."  If we could not have any notice at all legally then that would
> be simpler still.  Git already tracks who did what, and should always
> be the place to go for this info.
>
>> If developer A writes 51% of the lines of an ebuild and developer B
>> writes 49%, should B not be listed?
>
> Under the policy, no.
>
>> What if all the metadata lines defining variables consists of 75% of the
>> file and was written by A, but the core functionality of the ebuild (25%
>> by size) was written by B?
>
> Under the policy, "A and others" is listed.
>
>> If A writes an ebuild, and B replaces a majority (>50%) of the ebuild,
>> should B remove A from attribution?
>
> Under the policy, yes, assuming this is noticed.  The policy does not
> require checking on every commit, but only when the issue is
> escalated.  That is actually a change from the wording which tried to
> keep things more strict.
>
>> I think that specifying that substantial (though not necessarily
>> specific in defining this) contributions/contributors should included in
>> the copyright attribution and that substantial contribution attribution
>> *is* recommended.
>
> So, the issue then becomes whether we have to define "substantial."
> The goal is to have something actionable.  Anybody can run git blame
> easily enough.  Figuring out what is "substantial" is harder.
>
> But, the other change to the policy was to relax this and not worry
> about keeping it as up to date.  So, in that spirit maybe we can be
> more vague and let it be dealt with via escalation.
>
> That seems to be the approach the Linux Foundation takes.  As far as I
> can tell they have no policy regarding copyright notice - and the
> contents of their files are all over the place.  Presumably committers
> make their own judgement calls, and if somebody has a problem with it
> they point it out to the Linux Foundation.
>
> That said, the fact that this is basically happened with the eudev
> copyright notices didn't prevent it from turning into a bit of a
> tempest in a teapot with all kinds of accusations being tossed around.
> It was dealt with upon escalation, but people tend to go crazy over
> this stuff so some kind of policy that an ordinary dev can understand
> wouldn't hurt, so that the issue is prevented.  That was the goal of
> the policy.
>
> A big goal here was to keep it simple and understandable but not too
> vague.  It shouldn't need constant appeals to Trustees/Council/whoever
> to apply to individual situations.
>
> To the extent that the notice doesn't truly give credit to
> contributors I'd call it a feature and not a bug.  I'd rather have the
> notices viewed as useless for that purpose, because then people won't
> constantly squabble about how does/doesn't get included on them.  The
> ideal choices would be listing everybody or nobody, but everybody is
> cumbersome, and nobody doesn't seem to be legally valid.  So, listing
> one by name preserves the nonsensical nature of the notice while still
> meeting the legal requirement.  Or something like that...
>

Keeping it simple is fine by me.  As mentioned in my other reply to Ulm,
I think I was conflating contribution attribution and copyright
assignment.  As long as "and others" (being unnamed) doesn't prevent
others from retaining their copyright (in practice as opposed to in
principle), SGTM.


-- 
NP-Hardass