Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Kenneth Vestergaard Schmidt]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 08:26:37AM +0200, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:
> > What _real_ difference does it make? The only difference is that
> > Gentoo Technologies, Inc. can't relicense it and make a closed-source
> > version. However, if it was possible for them, and if they did, everybody
> > could just ignore them and continue working on the last version released
> > under the GPL.
> The point is not that you can't fork the project. You'r right at that
> you always can, if it's licensed under GPL. The point is preserving
> the future "free" status of _all_ derivative works as well. If you don't
> care about that, you can just put all the work in "public domain".

But all of a sudden I have to trust you? You won't trust Gentoo, why should
anybody want to trust eachother then? If people keep the copyright to them-
selves, it would mean that small pieces of Gentoo could fall into proprie-
tary status. If the majority of people are so paranoid that they won't trust
Gentoo Technologies, Inc. with a few ebuilds, the only solution would be to
make a "Gentoo Social Contract" or some sorts, where it would be guaranteed
that Gentoo will always be Free Software. But if you can't make the leap of
faith and trust Daniel Robbins when he says Gentoo will always be Free, why
would you trust such a document?

Anyway, once I get around to contributing to this fine project, I won't have
any problem assigning my copyright to Gentoo. It's the least I can do in
return for getting such a nice distribution.

--
Best Regards
Kenneth Vestergaard Schmidt