Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: converting copyright/license information in OpenRC

[William Hubbs]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 02:24:22PM -0500, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On 15 Dec 2015 09:31, William Hubbs wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 12:05:07AM -0500, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > > On 11 Dec 2015 14:16, Patrick McLean wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 15:37:48 -0600 William Hubbs wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 09:04:47PM +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > >>>>> On Fri, 11 Dec 2015, William Hubbs wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > Well, the OpenRC project is currently inconsistent about this, so the
> > > > > intention is to make it consistent.
> > > > >
> > > > >  The .c/.h files have file-scope licenses, but that isn't true for
> > > > >  everything in the project.
> > > > >
> > > > > I am willing to make the effort to do this, I was just wondering if
> > > > > there are any legal pitfalls I need to worry about.
> > > > >
> > > > > My theory is I can probably use git to find out who all of the authors
> > > > > are, and generate an Authors list from that information and from
> > > > > looking at copyright notices.
> > > >
> > > > One concern about this is the possibility of copied code. If OpenRC
> > > > ever copied code from other BSD licensed projects, then dropping the
> > > > notice from the top of the file would be a violation of the upstream
> > > > license.
> > >
> > > OpenRC isn't purely Gentoo copyright, so it's already a violation.
> > > the majority of entries belong to Roy.
> >
> > I have no idea what you mean by "it's already a violation", and I'm not
> > sure what Gentoo Copyright has to do with it.
>
> your description sounds like you want to run:
>   s/Copyright .*/Copyright OpenRC Authors/
>
> i'm saying you can't do that
 
 That's the first part, the second part is to have an Authors file at
 the top level that lists all of the authors and refer to that in the
 copyright statement, see the license branch of the main github repo and
 let me know if this is legal. The site I linked seems to think so
 because I'm not deleting copyright attributions, just moving them around.

> > Altering Copyright statements to try to claim Gentoo copyright would
> > definitely be a violation, but that's not what I'm wanting to do.
>
> adding multiple entries isn't a problem and in fact could/should be done
> in most openrc files at this time

Multiple entries are what I want to get away from; it is a nightmare to
maintain, and the vcs shows far better than you or I ever could
which code belongs to who (see git blame). That is what the site I
linked talks about.

William