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On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 3:46 PM, Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@g.o> wrote: |
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> |
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> And what about anonymous developers? We do have them and in modern |
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> world people may have good reasons to stay anonymous. |
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While we have occasionally allowed individuals to not publish their |
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real name (which I'm not entirely convinced is a great idea), we do |
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require that all developers disclose their names for legal reasons. |
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Now, the reality is that we don't currently rigorously verify the |
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names that are supplied. |
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In at least some situations somebody who has a need to protect their |
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identity may be eligible to have their government issue an ID under |
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another name legally, which would be an ideal solution to this |
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problem. That also takes us out of the role of having to vet the |
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legitimacy of such requests. |
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> Just reminds |
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> me about US braindead law allowing company to own all code written |
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> by dev, while he/she is employed, even when that code was written |
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> using during off-duty hours or vacation days. |
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> |
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A citation would be welcome on that "law." :) |
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The actual laws say that copyright is owned by the author, unless it |
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is a work for hire, or unless it is transferred. Now, employment |
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contracts often make grandiose claims of ownership to anything |
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somebody does, but the extent to which these claims are enforceable in |
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court is a bit dubious. If the work is related to the area of |
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somebody's employment then there probably is a pretty strong claim to |
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the work under US law, and I think the claims are hard to enforce if |
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the employee is a low-level employee and the work has no relationship |
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to what somebody is paid for. And then there is every shade of grey |
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in-between. It is like non-compete clauses: lots of companies have |
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them, but courts tend to be more reasonable in enforcing them. |
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In any case, either way we don't do ourselves any favors by keeping |
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somebody anonymous. If somebody has a legal claim on something |
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contributed to Gentoo it is better that we identify that issue before |
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it becomes deeply embedded in our codebase where it becomes much |
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harder to remove. Hiding problems doesn't make them go away, and |
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willfully hiding them tends not to be looked at kindly in a court. |
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-- |
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Rich |
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