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On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 2:41 PM Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> wrote: |
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> |
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> On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 12:47 PM William Hubbs <williamh@g.o> wrote: |
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>> |
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>> This is what concerns me as well. All of the folks in this thread who |
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>> want to forbid multiline copyright notices have yet to convince me that |
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>> there is a technical argument for doing so. |
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> |
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> I don't believe the technical arguments have much basis; instead the argument is about community and humanpower. |
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I've yet to see any technical arguments. I certainly haven't made any. |
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There is no technical reason to allow multi-line notices, and there is |
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no technical reason to forbid them. This is entirely a non-technical |
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issue. |
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I think they should be forbidden for a number of non-technical reasons: |
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1. They add clutter to ebuilds. At the very least they should be put |
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at the bottom of ebuilds and not at the top, and anybody editing an |
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ebuild should be free to move a multiline notice to the bottom if they |
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see it at the top. |
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2. It strikes me as being fairly anti-community. Basically the |
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companies that give us the most trouble get to stick their names all |
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over ebuilds, while freely benefitting from hundreds of other ebuilds |
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that others have contributed without any care for sticking their names |
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on stuff. Sony should be contributing because they want to |
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contribute, not to stick their names on things. Or if they want to |
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sponsor us they should do so under the normal terms for doing so, |
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which generally involve more than contributing a couple of lines of |
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ebuild boilerplate. |
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3. It opens up a slippery slope. Once you say one person can stick |
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their names on something, how long until everybody and their uncle |
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starts doing it and an ebuild with a long history like glibc has three |
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pages of contributor names at the top (and IMO glibc is one of those |
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few ebuilds that actually seems non-trival)? |
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4. The people digging in to try to force this policy have no interest |
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in participating in the Gentoo community, or actually advocating for |
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their position. It seems that they simply consider their position |
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undebatable and expect us to just accept it because heaven forbid one |
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developer not be allowed to contribute during business hours, despite |
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many others having no issues with this at all since their employers |
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are more reasonable. |
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IMO Gentoo (and the members of its community) should be using this as |
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an opportunity to tarnish Sony's reputation, not bend over backwards |
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to cater to a random request of a company lawyer who seemingly isn't |
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interested in actually discussing their policy. This isn't Sony |
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contributing to open source, this is Sony interfering with what has |
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basically been routine practice in the community for 15-20 years. |
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-- |
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Rich |
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