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

[mbutcher]

On Thursday 07 February 2002 01:48 pm, you wrote:
> Since ebuilds
> used to be created by a tight-knit team, this used to be a non-issue.
> Now many people are contributing ebuilds, so it looks like we should
> change our policy.

Ah, yes... the problems of becomming popular! That's what you get, Mr. 
Robbins (et al), for putting together such a cool product. ;-)

> Karltk on irc suggested that we:
>
> 1) Require all ebuilds submitted to us to be released under the GPL
> 2) State that any ebuilds without a Copyright line will be assigned to
> Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
> 3) Allow contributors to keep their copyright on the ebuilds they submit
>
> We then need to figure out how to address the issue of contributed
> ebuilds being derivatives of existing ebuilds that are Copyright someone
> else!  Must we list all the copyright holders at the top of every
> ebuild?  It gets confusing (to me at least).
>
> Obviously, we need to add something like this to gentoo.org, along with
> a revised version of the Debian Social Contract.  But as of right now,
> any new policy regarding Copyright hasn't been finalized yet.  I'm still
> learning about it and it's still being discussed.
>
> I guess these issues are a 'good thing' and a result that Gentoo Linux
> and the developer/user community is growing and maturing.

Sound reasoning. I like it. 

Not sure how to handle that case of extending or updating existing ebuilds. 
By the letter of the law, you can probably change the code, remove the 
original copyright, and replace it with your own, so long as it's under GPL. 
However, I would say that the best thing to do (etiquette wise) is to cite 
all previous authors, e.g.

Copyright (c) M Butcher, based on the orginal script by D Robbins

Or something like that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.