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-----Forwarded Message----- |
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From: Kevin Howard <khoward@×××××××.com> |
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To: zhen@g.o |
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Subject: Re: Gentoo Foundation copyright assignment document |
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Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:02:04 -0700 |
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|
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John, |
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|
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I apologize for the delay in sending you this. My contact at the EFF |
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said there had been several other responses to your initial request, so |
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hopefully you have been able to follow up to one of those. Let me know |
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if you have not had further contact from the EFF and I'll contact them |
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again. |
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|
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I've taken some time to review your initial email, the copyright |
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assignment document and the gentoo.org web site, along with some other |
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web resources such as the text of the GNU GPL |
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(http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php) and Debian's Social |
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Contract (http://www.debian.org/social_contract). |
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|
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As I mentioned in my previous email, I am licensed as an attorney only |
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in the State of California, and therefore cannot give legal advice |
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concerning the specifics of the construction of Gentoo Foundation's |
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copyright assignment contract. Specifically in light of the concern |
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outlined by the Trustees about "the entire document being tossed in |
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court" it would be best if an attorney licensed in New Mexico reviewed |
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the assignment document for consistency with New Mexico law. |
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|
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What I can do is give you some general thoughts about the concerns of |
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the trustees. Questions about how specific to be, the enforceability of |
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the assignment, and international contract issues should be able to be |
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dealt with by the Trustees working together with the help of a New |
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Mexico-licensed attorney familiar with entity formation. These are all |
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preferences the Trustees should be able to hammer out into specific |
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terms for the assignment document. |
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|
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I don't know how non-profit organizations are registered in New Mexico, |
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but I did find that "Gentoo Technologies, Inc." is still a valid, |
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registered corporation name in New Mexico and that the whois results for |
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the gentoo.org domain name shows that Gentoo Technologies, Inc. is the |
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registrant. Whichever name the Trustees choose to use for the |
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organization, make sure to be consistent across all documents, contracts |
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and other identifying material, including the web. |
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|
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One thing the organization may want to consider doing is something like |
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what Debian does with what it calls "non-free" works. They include a |
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"non-free" area in their archive for works whose authors want to |
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maintain the copyright or patent on and do not make such "non-free" |
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works a part of the Debian system. See item 5 here: |
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http://www.debian.org/social_contract |
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|
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In the same vein, Debian also reserves the right to restrict files from |
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being included in their archives at all if such inclusion would cause |
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licensing or distribution problems. See: |
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http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-pkgcopyright |
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|
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I hope this helps, and good luck with the Gentoo Linux project. |
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|
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|
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-Kevin Howard |
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|
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|
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|
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John Davis wrote: |
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|
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> Kevin - |
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> Thank you again for your time. First, here are the points of contention |
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> as raised by the Gentoo trustees: |
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> |
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> * It claims ownership of developer hard drives "...or computer media |
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> relating to the Work.") |
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> |
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> * It says "Gentoo Technologies" instead of "Gentoo Foundation" |
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> |
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> * It is completely unenforceable for any user (non-dev) that submits |
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> something to bugzilla and/or submissions@g.o. (we're not |
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> requiring them to sign this doc, so it's not enforceable) [1] |
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> |
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> * Because we allow the storage things like kernel patches, etc. for |
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> which we do not own the copyright, in CVS (in the files/ directories), |
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> it shows that we're selectively enforcing the copyright assignment. In |
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> the past, this has often resulted in the entire document being tossed in |
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> court. |
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> |
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> * It is questionable whether or not we have any legal right to enforce |
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> copyright claims for non-US devs. They're not US citizens, so it's not |
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> clear if they're subject to US copyright restrictions/assignments. |
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> |
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> * We selectively enforce who must sign it. |
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> |
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> * [minor] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright/index.xml needs |
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> to be updated to remove Daniel from the text. |
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> |
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> 1. Since we are a community driven project, we often times accept |
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> software patches from non-developer (not affiliated with Gentoo) users |
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> and incorporate them into our tree. We usually do this two ways. The |
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> first way is to have users mail their software patches to |
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> submissions@g.o. From there, the patch filters down to the |
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> correct people. The second method is to have the user post the software |
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> patch to our bugtracking system at http://bugs.gentoo.org. The same |
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> process follows from there. |
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> |
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> The Copyright assignment document can be found at |
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> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright/assignment.txt. |
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> |
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> I look forward to hearing from you. |
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> |
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> Regards, |
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|
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-- |
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John Davis |
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Gentoo Linux Developer |
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<http://dev.gentoo.org/~zhen> |
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|
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GnuPG Public Key: <http://dev.gentoo.org/~zhen/zhen_pub.asc> |
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