Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications

[Alec Warner]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 3:12 PM Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 2:41 PM Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 12:47 PM William Hubbs <williamh@g.o>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> This is  what concerns me as well. All of the folks in this thread who
> >> want to forbid multiline copyright notices have yet to convince me that
> >> there is a technical argument for doing so.
> >
> > I don't believe the technical arguments have much basis; instead the
> argument is about community and humanpower.
>
> I've yet to see any technical arguments.  I certainly haven't made any.
>

There were definitely some made earlier in the discussion.


>
> There is no technical reason to allow multi-line notices, and there is
> no technical reason to forbid them.  This is entirely a non-technical
> issue.
>
> I think they should be forbidden for a number of non-technical reasons:
>
> 1.  They add clutter to ebuilds.  At the very least they should be put
> at the bottom of ebuilds and not at the top, and anybody editing an
> ebuild should be free to move a multiline notice to the bottom if they
> see it at the top.
>

So now you don't if the notices exist, as long as they are at the bottom of
the file? It seems inconsistent with the rest of your position ;)


>
> 2.  It strikes me as being fairly anti-community.  Basically the
> companies that give us the most trouble get to stick their names all
> over ebuilds, while freely benefitting from hundreds of other ebuilds
> that others have contributed without any care for sticking their names
> on stuff.  Sony should be contributing because they want to
> contribute, not to stick their names on things.  Or if they want to
> sponsor us they should do so under the normal terms for doing so,
> which generally involve more than contributing a couple of lines of
> ebuild boilerplate.
>

So this argument is basically; we don't understand why Sony wants to put
their name on the notice. In lieu of any facts, we will tell our own
narrative; anyone that causes trouble is a baddie; Sony is causing trouble,
therefore, Sony is 'anti-community', or 'name-grabbing' or whatever.


> 3.  It opens up a slippery slope.  Once you say one person can stick
> their names on something, how long until everybody and their uncle
> starts doing it and an ebuild with a long history like glibc has three
> pages of contributor names at the top (and IMO glibc is one of those
> few ebuilds that actually seems non-trival)?
>

I think you can easily look at other projects that let anyone stick their
name on anything to see what happens...I'm not sure this is a strong
argument against. These other projects seem fine and are not overflowing
with copyright notices.


>
> 4.  The people digging in to try to force this policy have no interest
> in participating in the Gentoo community, or actually advocating for
> their position.  It seems that they simply consider their position
> undebatable and expect us to just accept it because heaven forbid one
> developer not be allowed to contribute during business hours, despite
> many others having no issues with this at all since their employers
> are more reasonable.
>

I assert that you don't know anything about their reasons, their rationale,
their reasonableness or anything really. "People who have conflicts are
unreasonable" is really what I hear from this kind of speech and its not
really a great message to send.


>
> IMO Gentoo (and the members of its community) should be using this as
> an opportunity to tarnish Sony's reputation, not bend over backwards
> to cater to a random request of a company lawyer who seemingly isn't
> interested in actually discussing their policy.  This isn't Sony
> contributing to open source, this is Sony interfering with what has
> basically been routine practice in the community for 15-20 years.
>

I'm going to tell you the same thing I told Whissi on #-council

I think it is an entirely reasonable position to do the following:
 - Not accept the SEI notices because we do not understand the grounds on
which they are added.
 - Ask SEI for a rationale for what the notices are meant to convey, so we
can decide if we can support whatever that use case is; maybe its something
we didn't consider in the GLEP.

I don't think its reasonable to say they are mean shitheads; because the
fact is we don't know what they want to accomplish with the notices. My
concern is that they may later provide a reasonable use case for the
notices and the council will just say 'well that use case is stupid because
Sony is stupid'; because that is the message many members of the council
are currently communicating. Why would Sony even bother if the narrative is
the Council won't listen anyway? It looks like a waste of their time.

I think the above proposal puts the ball clearly in SEI's court; if they
want the notices accepted they can provide a memo detailing why. If they
don't care, they can drop the notices or stop committing.

-A


> --
> Rich
>
>