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

[Daniel Robbins]

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 10:08, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:
> > Do I have this wrong?
> Yes. you do have this wrong ;)

No, chouser was right.  I'm getting a bit worried by this trend of
Junior Gentoo Linux developers "explaining" Gentoo Linux policy when
they have no idea what said policy is.

> First of all, once contributions are GPL-ed , the fact that you do not
> own the copyright does not prevent you from distributing/modifying etc.
> So having all copyright go to Gentoo Inc. will not make your life easier
> if you want to continue the open-souce path.
>
> Second, you _can_not_ *require* contributors to give up their copyright.
> People can actualy get concerned about the Gentoo feature and intentions
> if you do. _If_ Gentoo Inc. will have all the copyrights, then _nothing_
> will prevent it one day changing the license for all _future_ versions.
> The fact that no single entity/person has all the copyright is
> a Good Thing (tm).

All ebuilds should be Copyrighted by Gentoo Technologies, Inc. or should
generally not be put on Portage.  We may need to change the license in
the future, from:

# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or
later

To:

# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 only

Particularly if something weird gets added to a new version of the GPL. 
If we have multiple copyright holders, doing this becomes a mess.

Best Regards,
 
-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@g.o>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.