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>>>>> On Sat, 24 Nov 2018, Alec Warner wrote: |
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> I don't believe the technical arguments have much basis; instead the |
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> argument is about community and humanpower. |
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> - There is an argument (non technical) that files in the ebuild |
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> repository should carry a copyright notice to signal that the content |
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> has a copyright. |
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> - A GLEP was written (glep76) to standardize what this should be. One |
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> of the (unstated) goals of the GLEP is to avoid spending time managing |
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> the copyright declarations; so it was decided to have 2 forms, the |
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> short form ("Gentoo Authors") and the traditional form (for when we |
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> import code and cannot remove notices.) |
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Exactly. |
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> The crux of the argument is about the maintenance of these copyright |
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> notices; not about the bytes they occupy or the CPU time spend reading |
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> them. |
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> - When is it allowed to add extra notices? |
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> - When is it allowed to remove extra notices? |
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> This is ultimately the problem I think we see with the SEI |
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> attribution. We don't understand *why* Sony wants the notice there and |
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> because of that we don't understand the answers to the above. |
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We don't understand it because they refuse to give us an explanation. |
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Which is not our fault. |
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> What I want to avoid happening is getting sued by Sony because the |
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> notices were added and then later removed; but we have not received |
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> guidance on this and I think it blocks us moving forward. |
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I don't see anything in the GPL-2 that would prevent us from removing |
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redundant copyright notices. |
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For example, the FDL-1.3 requires in section 4.D. to "Preserve all the |
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copyright notices of the Document", and the CC-BY-SA licenses contain |
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similar wording. However, such a clause can neither be found in the |
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GPL-2 nor in the GPL-3. In fact, the GPL-3 clarifies in section 7 that |
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it can be *supplemented* with terms "requiring preservation of specified |
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reasonable legal notices or author attributions", but the license itself |
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doesn't require this. |
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Disclaimer: IANAL, TINLA. |
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Ulrich |
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