Re: [gentoo-project] Bad license and attribution by ChromiumOS and CoreOS

[Andrew Savchenko]

On Sat, 7 Mar 2015 09:53:57 +0100 Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >>>>> On Sat, 07 Mar 2015, Patrick Lauer wrote:
>
> > The README at both
>
> > https://github.com/coreos/portage-stable
> > and
> > https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/overlays/portage-stable/+/master/README
>
> > claims that:
>
> > """
> > Copyright (c) 2011 The Chromium OS Authors. All rights reserved.
> > Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style license that can be
> > found in the LICENSE file.
> > """
>
> > Since this is a copy of Gentoo ebuilds this is demonstrably wrong, the
> > copyrights on the files themselves are intact. Copyright is obviously
> > Gentoo Foundation, and license is GPL-2.
>
> Thanks for noticing this. Quoting the GPL-2:
>
>    4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
>    except as expressly provided under this License.  Any attempt
>    otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
>    void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
>
> Does this apply here? It would mean that Google's rights to distribute
> the Portage tree have been terminated.

GPL-2 is violated. So yes, it applies here. And until this issue
is resolved they lost not only the right to distribute, but the
rights to use and modify.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko