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First of all, in the past, it _has_ been recommended that the copyright be |
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ratained by the person who wrote the ebuild (It came up in January... can't |
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remember what the thread title was). "Junior" contributors are likely just |
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repeating what they were told were the accepted policies. |
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|
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But I'm curious to know why the copyright has to be assigned to Gentoo |
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Technologies. My experience with many open source projects has been that the |
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person who wrote the code retains the copyright. I don't see a compellig |
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reason to give up the copyright. Why should we? |
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|
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On the other hand, I see Vitaly's second point to be valid. I am sceptical |
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about giving up copyright on anything I've done, as it means giving up any |
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semblence of ownership, control, or future rights to that item. I mean, you |
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can use it under GPL all you want, but what if I want to use portions of the |
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code I wrote to include it in proprietary projects that I do under the |
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auspices of my employer. Now I have to ask _you_ permission to reuse _my_ |
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code. |
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|
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I'm not completely opposed to assigning Gentoo my copyright, but I can't see |
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any reason, from either my or your perspective, why I should _have_ to do |
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that. |
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|
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On Thursday 07 February 2002 12:22 pm, you wrote: |
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> On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 10:08, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote: |
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> > > Do I have this wrong? |
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> > |
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> > Yes. you do have this wrong ;) |
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> |
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> No, chouser was right. I'm getting a bit worried by this trend of |
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> Junior Gentoo Linux developers "explaining" Gentoo Linux policy when |
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> they have no idea what said policy is. |
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> |
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> > First of all, once contributions are GPL-ed , the fact that you do not |
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> > own the copyright does not prevent you from distributing/modifying etc. |
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> > So having all copyright go to Gentoo Inc. will not make your life easier |
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> > if you want to continue the open-souce path. |
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> > |
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> > Second, you _can_not_ *require* contributors to give up their copyright. |
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> > People can actualy get concerned about the Gentoo feature and intentions |
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> > if you do. _If_ Gentoo Inc. will have all the copyrights, then _nothing_ |
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> > will prevent it one day changing the license for all _future_ versions. |
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> > The fact that no single entity/person has all the copyright is |
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> > a Good Thing (tm). |
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> |
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> All ebuilds should be Copyrighted by Gentoo Technologies, Inc. or should |
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> generally not be put on Portage. We may need to change the license in |
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> the future, from: |
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> |
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> # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or |
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> later |
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> |
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> To: |
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> |
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> # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 only |
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> |
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> Particularly if something weird gets added to a new version of the GPL. |
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> If we have multiple copyright holders, doing this becomes a mess. |
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> |
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> Best Regards, |
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