[gentoo-nfp] Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] Soliciting Feedback: Gentoo Copyright Assignments / Licensing

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Greg KH <gregkh@g.o> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:07:59AM -0500, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> Before I start, yes, the trustees realize that there are legal issues
>> around copyright assignment in general, and that various workaround
>> exist and may or may not work, such as various contributor licensing
>> agreements that are used by various organizations, especially in
>> Europe.  The purpose of this thread isn't really to debate this topic,
>> as it might be moot in any case.
>
> I understand your wish to somehow think that the legal issues involved
> have no pertinence to this discussion, but that just isn't the case.

No such wish exists.  I just want to focus the discussion on the
larger question of whether we want to pursue assignment or something
like it, and not spend lots of time debating the details of how this
is done.  If as you suggest we don't pursue assignment at all, then
there is no need to consider how we might have gone about it, had we
had that desire.

If this was not clear, I apologize.

> On a personal note, if any copyright assignment was in place, I would
> never have been able to become a Gentoo developer, and if it were to be
> put into place, I do not think that I would be allowed to continue to be
> one.  I'm sure lots of other current developers are in this same
> situation, so please keep that in mind when reviewing this process.

Thanks, this is helpful to know.

Rich