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On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 01:09:25AM -0400, Jon Portnoy wrote: |
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> > Would it not be possible for copyright to be assigned to Gentoo and the |
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> > author of the ebuild? |
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> |
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> That's what we needed information from Daniel's lawyer about. |
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I've been trying to get people to keep their names in the copyright line for |
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over a year, but no one has really started doing it. To my knowledge, it is |
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better to have multiple official copyright holders for GPL code than just a |
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single copyright holder. I would like all our ebuilds to have a copyright |
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like this: |
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# Copyright 2003 Gentoo Technologies, Joe User, and others (see cvs |
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# changelog.) Distributed under the GPL version 2. |
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I don't see why this would be a problem for anyone, and makes a lot more |
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sense than what we are doing now. |
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What we are doing now began way back when we figured out that slapping a |
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"Copyright 2000 Gentoo Technologies, Inc." allowed us to comply with the GPL |
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and get back to coding. That's all there is to our current "policy," folks. |
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I am very much hoping that people will start using shared copyrights soon. |
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I think it's very bad to continue using the single "Copyright Gentoo" one, |
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and hope that some developers will start doing this. This is one trend that |
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I can't start, since all the work I do is under the Gentoo Technologies, |
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Inc. name. While I know that I'm not going to rip Gentoo off, the primary |
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benefit to me is that it quells those who enjoy being paranoid about my |
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intentions. |
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The rules should be: |
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ebuilds should be copyright Gentoo Technologies, Inc. *and* the original |
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author/submitter, with a note for all additional cvs committers. What this |
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does is prevent Gentoo or the original committer or later contributors from |
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changing the license away from the GPL 2 unless all copyright holders agree. |
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This basically makes it practically impossible for code to be hijacked from |
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our tree, or from our users (by me presumably, after going on some kind of |
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evil kick.) This seems near-ideal. It would be helpful if a GPL and |
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copyright expert could review and comment. |
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> > I believe that this has been discussed previously on this list (when I get |
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> > a chance I'll search my archive) and that there was an agreement reached |
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> > between Gentoo and an educational institution on this very matter. |
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> |
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> Was that agreement actually reached? I have been away from development |
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> and not very involved for a couple weeks. |
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I need to contact them; haven't had time to follow up after LWE. After |
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thinking a bit about this, it's probably best that I ask Richard Stallman |
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what he recommends since he is likely to be much more versed in the ins and |
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outs of this kind of thing than the typical IP lawyer who is not very |
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familiar with the GPL. I'll cc this email to Richard and see what he says. |
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Richard, your input would certainly be welcome, and I can forward all |
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replies you send me to the gentoo-dev list (gentoo-dev is subscriber post |
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only.) |
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Best Regards, |
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|
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-- |
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Daniel Robbins |
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Chief Architect, Gentoo Linux |
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http://www.gentoo.org |
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