Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Greg KH <gregkh@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: Copyright, non-US devs and Gentoo Foundation vs Gentoo (Was: [gentoo-dev] Some council topics for March meeting)
Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2007 02:29:49
Message-Id: 20070304013215.GA19316@kroah.com
In Reply to: Re: Copyright, non-US devs and Gentoo Foundation vs Gentoo (Was: [gentoo-dev] Some council topics for March meeting) by Danny van Dyk
1 On Sat, Mar 03, 2007 at 08:24:23PM +0100, Danny van Dyk wrote:
2 > Am Samstag, 3. M?rz 2007 19:48 schrieb Thomas R?sner:
3 > > Hi,
4 > >
5 > > Danny van Dyk schrieb:
6 > > > 2) There are countries who acutally adhere to the Berne Convention
7 > > > (1886). This means even the deed of commiting sources with a
8 > > > "Copyright (C) XXXX Gentoo Foundation" is useless in most countries
9 > > > of the EU. E.g, *none* of the stuff that I ever commited to
10 > > > Gentoo's repositories is copyrighted (solely) by the Gentoo
11 > > > Foundation, due to me being German citizen and writing that stuff
12 > > > in Germany. FYI, there isn't even something like Copyright in
13 > > > Germany. We have an "Author's right" which agree with the Berne
14 > > > Convention and deviates from copyright in several points.
15 > >
16 > > Except that you "giving away copyright" or "donating to public
17 > > domain" is understood by (german) courts to give away usage rights,
18 > > which is exactly what is intended, no?
19 > That doesn't come down to the effects for the Gentoo Foundation:
20 >
21 > Corporation Foo uses the Gentoo-x86 tree in violation of GPL. Foundation
22 > tries to sue them, as they think they have the copyright. Corporation
23 > Foo's lawyers say: Uh, you don't even have the copyright on all of
24 > gentoo-x86. See the problem?
25
26 No, the foundation has copyright on portions of it, and they are allowed
27 to assert that copyright. So everything is just fine.
28
29 thanks,
30
31 greg "i've talked to too many lawyers lately" k-h
32 --
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