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

[Andrew Savchenko]

On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 21:31:21 +0000 M. J. Everitt wrote:
> On 15/11/18 18:50, William Hubbs wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 06:50:52PM +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >> | * Notice identifies the copyright owner at the time the work was first
> >> |   published for parties seeking permission to use the work.
> >> | * Notice identifies the year of first publication, which may be used
> >> |   to determine the term of copyright protection in the case of an
> >> |   anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire.
> >> | * Notice may prevent the work from becoming an orphan work by
> >> |   identifying the copyright owner and specifying the term of the
> >> |   copyright.
> >>
> >> For "indentifying the copyright owner" nothing short of a complete list
> >> will suffice. Especially, a notice like the following (which mentions
> >> only "Gentoo Authors" and "Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.") does
> >> not help with that at all (i.e., it is no better than the simplified
> >> notice):
> >> https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/sys-cluster/ceph/ceph-13.2.2-r2.ebuild?id=5f77c21f23bf1c4cfb9e68be7aa27669c8146e8e#n1
> > Remember that in the US, SIE is a legal entity, so it can  hold
> > copyrights, just like a person can. It is like "Gentoo Foundation, Inc."
> >
> > So, there would be two contributors in that ebuild: "Gentoo Authors"
> > and SIE.
> >
> >> Besides, these last three items are pretty much moot for a work released
> >> under the GPL-2 (which grants "permission to use"), and I think that
> >> even you aren't suggesting that we should go for a complete list of
> >> contributors.
> > You are right, I'm not advocating for a complete list of contributors.
> > I'm just advocating for flexability where contributors want it, and SIE
> > is one of those contributors that wants it.
> >
> > William
> Could we not simply move copyright notices into the metadata.xml, and not
> worry about the ebuild text itself?!

No, because Gentoo is used worldwide. Just for example: in Russia
file without copyright notices is considered proprietary (not
public domain! project wide license may help though in some cases)
and removal of copyright notices without author's agreement is a
felony except for court decision or expiration reasons.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko