Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] GLEP 76: Copyright Policy [v4]

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Tue, 02 Oct 2018, NP-Hardass  wrote:

> On 09/29/2018 03:46 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> IANAL, but as I understand it, the requirements for the name that
>> appears in a copyright notice are rather lax, and your quote from the
>> Berne convention seems to confirm that. Also there is nothing in the
>> GLEP's wording that would forbid the use of a pseudonym in the copyright
>> notice, as long as it will qualify as an identifier of the copyright
>> holder. (The Signed-off-by line is a different issue, though.)

> "For commits made using a VCS, the committer shall certify agreement to
> the Certificate of Origin by adding Signed-off-by: Name <e-mail> to the
> commit message as a separate line. Committers must use their real name,
> i.e., the name that would appear in an official document like a passport."

> "By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
> [...]
> The contribution was provided directly to me by some other person who
> certified 1., 2., 3., or 4., and I have not modified it."

> Which means a contribution of pseudonymous copywritten code cannot be
> made.  The person making the commit cannot sign off on it unless the
> author signs off on it, and the author cannot sign off on it because
> that requires that the author not be pseudonymous.

That doesn't contradict my statement that the author be listed under a
pseudonym in the copyright notice (or in an attribution).

> UNLESS you think this falls under #2:
> "The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of my
> knowledge, is covered under an appropriate free software license, and I
> have the right under that license to submit that work with
> modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under the same
> free software license (unless I am permitted to submit under a different
> license), as indicated in the file; or"
> Which, as written, means that the committer must make a modifications to
> the pseudonymous work to qualify as "[FOSS licensed and] created in
> whole or in part by me."

That wording has be copied from the Linux DCO. Presumably it would be
clearer if it said "submit that work with or without modifications".
If unmodified distribution/submission was not allowed, the license
wouldn't qualify as a free software license, in the first place.

> The premise of which is that pseudonymous contributions aren't allowed
> unless the author submits it as a patch, not using a VCS (as
> contributions via VCS must use the Certificate of Origin), and the
> committer makes some trivial modification to them, and then, by magic,
> we avoid requirements for real names.

See above, the right to distribute the work with modifications doesn't
preclude its distribution without modifications.

The only problem I see is that usually it would not be very polite to
sign off someone else's work. However, I don't think there is a real
problem with that, as long as the committer can confirm that the
contribution is under a free software license.

Ulrich