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On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 11:06:38PM -0500, Richard Yao wrote: |
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> On 11/17/2012 10:39 PM, Greg KH wrote: |
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> > Anyway, I now see a _very_ dangerous commit in the "Copyright" branch |
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> > that better not get merged into the tree, as it's wrong, and illegal |
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> > under all countries that follow the "normal" body of Copyright Law. It |
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> > should be removed right now before someone gets into trouble, not the |
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> > least of which would be the orginization that the copyright is now being |
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> > attributed to. |
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> > |
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> > Come on people, this is basic copyright law, it's not something |
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> > radically new. It's something that _all_ software developers should |
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> > know, either from school, or any company they have ever worked at. |
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> > |
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> > Please fix this now. |
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> |
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> klondike discussed the copyright branch changes with robbat2 before they |
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> started and there was no problem at the time. We have retained all |
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> copyright notices and looking at the branch, I find nothing objectionable. |
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Seriously? |
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Look at the comment I made on that commit for details, but here it is |
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again: |
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You can not claim copyright on a file you did not do one of the two |
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things: |
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- create yourself |
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- modify in a "major" manner |
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|
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Adding a comment at the top saying it is part of the eudev project and |
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covered under the LGPL2+ does not meet either of these requirements at |
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all. |
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|
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By merely importing a file into a new project, you can not claim |
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copyright on it. That's the law. The fact that this was reviewed by |
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someone makes me seriously wonder about the copyright policies of the |
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Gentoo Foundation. |
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|
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Also, you can not assign copyright to a third party, unless you have a |
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copyright assignment form. Do the developers doing this work have such |
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a form assigned? And in what country and state is that form valid for? |
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Different countries, and states, have different laws here, and |
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one-form-fits-all is not true anywhere. |
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So blindly adding a Gentoo Foundation copyright to _any_ file in this |
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repo, that has not met one of the two above rules, is illegal, and |
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grounds for opening the Gentoo Foundation up to big trouble. |
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> Would you mind joining us in IRC to discuss your concerns? |
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I don't do IRC anymore, sorry. Email is the best way to reach me. |
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thanks, |
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|
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greg k-h |
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