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On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:31:02 -0800 Rich Freeman wrote: |
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> On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 6:36 AM Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@g.o> wrote: |
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> > |
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> > What's the main problem of most FOSS including Gentoo? Lack of |
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> > human power. And here you propose to neglect contributions if they |
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> > want a proper and legal and allowed by GPL attribution. |
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> |
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> Where is anybody talking about "attribution?" |
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> |
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> This is about copyright notice, which is NOT about crediting anybody |
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> with anything or giving attribution. It is about communicating the |
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> fact that code is copyrighted, so that people can't claim that they |
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> didn't know when the Foundation wants to sue them. I'm sure they're |
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> about to start doing that anytime... |
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|
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It is your intent, but not full consequences of such statement. |
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Lack of proper copyright notice may be considered as a copyright or |
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authorship violation in some jurisdictions. Gentoo is used not only |
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in the US. |
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|
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> Also, this doesn't seem to have been a problem in the past, and yet |
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> our policy was far less free then. |
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> |
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> > A few extra lines in the header doesn't as much as |
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> > inability to import GPL ebuilds to the tree due to our |
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> > questionable copyright line policy. |
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> |
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> What is it that we want to import but can't today? |
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|
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I have this problem for years(!!) with hasufel overlay from which I |
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wanted to take voip-related stuff. Also we have wltjr's overlay |
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which will be useful for java packages. |
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|
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> > > But, if you had to have multiple lines, then just wrap the existing |
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> > > notice. Don't turn it into some kind of revision history. |
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> > |
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> > That's what most FOSS software does. I see no reason why we should |
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> > be different. |
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> |
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> Do you have a citation for this? I'm not aware of many FOSS projects |
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> that use copyright notices as a revision history, let alone "most." |
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|
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git grep through git repositories of large FOSS projects will be a |
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citation you requested. |
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|
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> > IMO the best solution will be to recommend "Gentoo Authors" |
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> > attribution, but to allow additional copyright lines including the |
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> > case where "Gentoo Authors" is one of such lines. |
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> |
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> IMO doing this will just cause everybody and their uncle to insist on |
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> putting their names in various places. |
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|
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There is nothing wrong with this. |
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|
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> We've done just fine for going on 20 years not allowing any notice |
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> other than "Copyright xxx Gentoo Foundation." |
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|
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Except for it was entirely wrong except for early days of Gentoo. |
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|
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> Now we open things up a |
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> tiny bit and suddenly everybody and their uncle is saying that their |
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> employers won't let them contribute code unless they stick their |
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> company name in there. What have they been doing for the last decade? |
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|
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They were not contributing or less contributing to Gentoo. |
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|
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Best regards, |
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Andrew Savchenko |