Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] GLEP 76: Copyright Policy

[NP-Hardass]

On 06/11/2018 01:27 PM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 11 Jun 2018, NP-Hardass  wrote:
>
>> On 06/10/2018 04:34 PM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> [...]
>
>>> Copyright Attribution
>>> ---------------------
>>>
>>> All files included in Gentoo projects must contain an appropriate
>>> copyright notice, as defined by this policy.
>>>
>>> A proper copyright notice appears near the top of the file, and reads::
>>>
>>> Copyright YEARS LARGEST-CONTRIBUTOR [OTHER-CONTRIBUTORS] and others
>>>
>>> The largest contributor is whatever entity owns copyright to some
>>> portion of the largest number of lines in the file.  Additional
>>> contributors can be listed, but this is neither required nor
>>> recommended.  The "and others" text may be omitted if the explicitly
>>> listed contributors hold copyright to the entire file.
>
>> Why is this not recommended? Here are a couple of scenarios that came to
>> mind that lead to me to question how that would play out:
>> If developer A writes 51% of the lines of an ebuild and developer B
>> writes 49%, should B not be listed?
>
> With the current policy neither of them is listed, so listing A would
> be an improvement. The goal is to keep things simple, and listing only
> the largest contributor looks like the simplest solution. For example,
> listing the two largest contributors would lead to similar problems.
> What should we do if A and B each write 34% and C writes 32%?
>
> In a previous version of the draft, we had required a full list of
> copyright holders to be listed somewhere in the file, and 60% of the
> lines to be accounted for:
> https://gitweb.gentoo.org/data/glep.git/commit/?id=bb756839bbd403059f6faeceaa114346d2a840d7
>
> We changed that because neither tracing the number of lines nor
> maintaining a list of authors in every ebuild seems feasible.
>
>> What if all the metadata lines defining variables consists of 75% of the
>> file and was written by A, but the core functionality of the ebuild (25%
>> by size) was written by B?
>
> That would get us into a discussion on which portions of an ebuild are
> copyrightable and which are not. Again, we want simple rules there.
>
>> If A writes an ebuild, and B replaces a majority (>50%) of the ebuild,
>> should B remove A from attribution?
>> I think that specifying that substantial (though not necessarily
>> specific in defining this) contributions/contributors should included in
>> the copyright attribution and that substantial contribution attribution
>> *is* recommended.
>
> See above. Explicitly listing only one copyright holder in the
> copyright line looks like the simplest possible solution. Listing
> nobody would be even simpler, but I think that you cannot have a
> copyright line without at least one entity.
>
> Also note that the exercise is _not_ about giving credit to authors
> (and we currently don't do that with the Foundation copyright either).
> The purpose of the copyright notice is to make a statement that the
> work is copyrighted, in order to defeat a possible defense of
> "innocent infringement".

Hence the "and others." Got it. I think that slipped my mind when I
typed up the email.  IANAL, so as long as "and others" would hold its
weight in copyright litigation, SGTM; my points are pretty much moot. I
guess I (wrongly) assumed it was partly a crediting thing.

Thanks for the clarification.

>
> Ulrich
>


-- 
NP-Hardass