Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Richard Yao <ryao@g.o>
To: Greg KH <gregkh@g.o>
Cc: gentoo-dev@l.g.o, klondike@g.o, "Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@g.o>, ulm@g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] udev-ng? (Was: Summary Council meeting Tuesday 13 November 2012)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 04:31:42
Message-Id: 50A86381.7030901@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] udev-ng? (Was: Summary Council meeting Tuesday 13 November 2012) by Greg KH
1 On 11/17/2012 11:28 PM, Greg KH wrote:
2 > On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 11:06:38PM -0500, Richard Yao wrote:
3 >> On 11/17/2012 10:39 PM, Greg KH wrote:
4 >>> Anyway, I now see a _very_ dangerous commit in the "Copyright" branch
5 >>> that better not get merged into the tree, as it's wrong, and illegal
6 >>> under all countries that follow the "normal" body of Copyright Law. It
7 >>> should be removed right now before someone gets into trouble, not the
8 >>> least of which would be the orginization that the copyright is now being
9 >>> attributed to.
10 >>>
11 >>> Come on people, this is basic copyright law, it's not something
12 >>> radically new. It's something that _all_ software developers should
13 >>> know, either from school, or any company they have ever worked at.
14 >>>
15 >>> Please fix this now.
16 >>
17 >> klondike discussed the copyright branch changes with robbat2 before they
18 >> started and there was no problem at the time. We have retained all
19 >> copyright notices and looking at the branch, I find nothing objectionable.
20 >
21 > Seriously?
22 >
23 > Look at the comment I made on that commit for details, but here it is
24 > again:
25 >
26 > You can not claim copyright on a file you did not do one of the two
27 > things:
28 > - create yourself
29 > - modify in a "major" manner
30 >
31 > Adding a comment at the top saying it is part of the eudev project and
32 > covered under the LGPL2+ does not meet either of these requirements at
33 > all.
34 >
35 > By merely importing a file into a new project, you can not claim
36 > copyright on it. That's the law. The fact that this was reviewed by
37 > someone makes me seriously wonder about the copyright policies of the
38 > Gentoo Foundation.
39 >
40 > Also, you can not assign copyright to a third party, unless you have a
41 > copyright assignment form. Do the developers doing this work have such
42 > a form assigned? And in what country and state is that form valid for?
43 > Different countries, and states, have different laws here, and
44 > one-form-fits-all is not true anywhere.
45 >
46 > So blindly adding a Gentoo Foundation copyright to _any_ file in this
47 > repo, that has not met one of the two above rules, is illegal, and
48 > grounds for opening the Gentoo Foundation up to big trouble.
49 >
50 >> Would you mind joining us in IRC to discuss your concerns?
51 >
52 > I don't do IRC anymore, sorry. Email is the best way to reach me.
53 >
54 > thanks,
55 >
56 > greg k-h
57
58 Thanks for clarifying that. It will be fixed before it goes into HEAD.

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