Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
To: Patrick McLean <chutzpah@g.o>
Cc: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2018 06:49:52
Message-Id: w6gva4yj0n2.fsf@kph.uni-mainz.de
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications by Patrick McLean
1 >>>>> On Wed, 14 Nov 2018, Patrick McLean wrote:
2
3 > On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 09:24:08 +0100
4 > Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:
5
6 >> To say it again, ebuilds have a copyright notice for exactly two
7 >> reasons:
8 >>
9 >> - to protect us against the "innocent infringement" defense under
10 >> U.S. law, and
11 >>
12 >> - because the GPL-2 requires in section 1 to "appropriately publish
13 >> on each copy an appropriate copyright notice".
14 >>
15 >> For both of these, it is irrelevant what the precise contents of the
16 >> notice is. If you made a significant contribution to the file, then
17 >> you can claim copyright for it, even if there is no copyright notice
18 >> at all, of if you aren't mentioned in it.
19 >>
20 >> IANAL, but I think the case for being listed there explicitly is very
21 >> weak.
22
23 > Is accepting contributions form entities that require it a good
24 > argument? Is this really worth losing valuable contributions over?
25
26 *Why* would they require it? Is there any legal reason that I've
27 missed? In what way would an explicit copyright line help in a legal
28 dispute?
29
30 Also I still don't understand why "Gentoo Foundation" has worked for
31 you for many years, but "Gentoo Authors" does not.
32
33 Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications William Hubbs <williamh@g.o>