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On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 15:23:56 -0800 |
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Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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|
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> On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 11:38 AM Patrick McLean <chutzpah@g.o> |
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> wrote: |
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> > |
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> > On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:58:08 -0800 |
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> > Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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> > |
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> > > On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 11:18 PM Sarah White |
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> > > <kuzetsa@××××××××××.ovh> wrote: |
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> > > > |
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> > > > |
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> > > > multiline (standard form) copyright attribution doesn't have |
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> > > > anything to do with licensing, and only serves to strengthen |
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> > > > copyleft due to the presence of additional copyright notices |
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> > > > which clearly lay out a list of entities / people with a stake |
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> > > > in protecting the interests of an opensource project remaining |
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> > > > FOSS/Libre. |
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> > > |
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> > > First, git already does this. |
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> > |
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> > It does not, it lists authors, not copyright holders which are not |
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> > the same thing. |
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> |
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> Nothing prevents us from adding copyright info to commit messages, and |
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> companies that feel strongly about documenting their copyright over |
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> their contributions would probably be best off doing it in git where |
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> it is less likely to get lost/deleted/etc over time. It would also be |
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> out of the way for those not looking for this info. |
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I don't object to adding the copyright notice to the commit message |
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rather than the ebuild, the only caveat is that the copyright should be |
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propigated to the rsync tree as well (since most users use rsync rather |
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than git). Perhaps the "fattening" step could do it, even just a |
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top-level file listing packages and copyright owners, should not be |
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overly hard to generate, maybe with a post-push hook that updates it |
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when a copyright tag is detected in the push. |
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|
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> > > Second, please cite an example of a copyright lawsuit that was won |
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> > > because multiple notices were listed, or a law that provides |
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> > > protection if multiple notices are provided. Your claim that |
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> > > doing this "strengthen[s] copyleft" is baseless as far as I can |
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> > > tell. |
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> > |
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> > I don't think it's about citing cases, the GPL has never gotten to |
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> > trial AFAIK, so under that metric, the GPL is useless. |
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> |
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> I suggested that you could cite laws as well. GPL is well-grounded in |
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> copyright law (the law says basically that users of software have no |
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> rights to copy it, and then GPL grants a few extra rights). The law |
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> takes away, and the GPL gives the user more freedom than they would |
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> have otherwise under the law. |
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> |
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> Laundry lists of copyright notices have no particular basis in law, in |
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> particular because copyright law is already incredibly strong without |
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> it. A notice that names any copyright holder defeats an innocent |
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> infringement defense (which is already a pretty weak defense to begin |
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> with). Adding more names to the copyright line doesn't do anything |
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> else. |
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IANAL nor do I pretend to be one. A lawyer did instruct me to add the |
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copyright notices to ebuilds that I work on during work hours. |
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> In any case, the claim was made that this "strengthens copyright" and |
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> it is up to those making a claim to back it up with some kind of law |
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> (statutory or case law), not just argue that more text must be better. |
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AFAIK no one on this list/thread is a lawyer, so much if this is not |
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particularly valuable. Personally, I don't see why there is a strong |
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objection to a practice that is quite common in open source code. |