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On Thursday 21 August 2003 07:50, Jon Portnoy wrote: |
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> |
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> It's for our benefit. Otherwise, we're screwed. |
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> |
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> Frankly, sometimes we have to do things to protect ourselves, even if |
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> that means that when you contribute something to us, the contributed |
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> piece that becomes a part of Gentoo belongs in an intellectual property |
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> sense to Gentoo. You'll find the same situation if you want to |
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> contribute code to GNU projects: copyright must be assigned to the FSF |
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> so they can defend themselves. |
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Just to chip in.. it seems a dangerous policy to advocate all of the |
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copyrights being held in one place. Even if you trust Gentoo Technologies |
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Inc. do you trust everyone else that has financial dealings with this |
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company? Do you trust that no one in the world will sue Gentoo Tech. Inc., |
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say for patent infringement, or maybe claim a contract dispute and say that |
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they own xxx lines of already contributed code? |
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All it takes is for GTI to lose one court case and be bankrupted and it will |
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be obligated to sell its assets to pay court costs and fines. Now any code |
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where the copyright is solely held by GTI can have its license changed to a |
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closed, non-free one, and at that point a proprietory non-free fork of Gentoo |
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can be made. The GPL was explicitly designed to prevent this but when |
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copyright is assigned you must make clear in the contract that the code can |
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never be unGPLed. |
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I am unclear how copyright assignment is being done at the moment? I have |
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never been asked to assign copyright for any contributed ebuilds, and I have |
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never signed a contract with GTI, as far as I am concerned I still have |
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copyright on those GPL ebuilds. |
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-- |
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