Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] glep-0076: add clarification about the sign-off requirements

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Thu, 29 Jul 2021, Joonas Niilola wrote:

> I do find this thinking a bit backwards, especially WHEN contributing
> to an open-source project. I think this should be flipped around;
> Unless stated otherwise, we presume a contribution to this open source
> project is blablabla licensed / copyrightable under open source rules.

Unfortunately, copyright law doesn't work like this.

Typically, a contribution will be an adaptation of an existing work.
By copyright law, it is a protected work, and the author has the
exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution, unless he or she
grants these rights to others, typically by releasing it under some
license.

This leaves us with the following cases (probably not a complete list):

a) A contribution with a Signed-off-by line and a known real name.
   ⇒ Can be accepted, because the author confirmed that it is under a
   free software license. The committer adds another S-o-b line and
   certifies the commit under point 4 of the GCO.

b) A contribution with a S-o-b line and a name known to be a pseudoym.
   ⇒ Same as a) but we may be in (more) trouble when it would turn out
   that the certification was false, i.e. the code was taken from
   somewhere else and the committer doesn't have the right to distribute
   it under a free software license. (Note that this case is not allowed
   by our existing copyright policy.)

c) A contribution with a S-o-b line and name of unknown status.
   ⇒ Same as a) or b)

d) A contribution without a S-o-b line but not legally significant
   (e.g. by the FSF's 15-lines rule of thumb [1]).
   ⇒ Can be accepted. The committer adds a S-o-b line and certifies the
   commit under GCO point 2.

e) A contribution without a S-o-b line and of significant size, but with
   an independent indication of its license (e.g. copyright and license
   notices in the file's header).
   ⇒ Can be accepted. The committer adds a S-o-b line and certifies the
   commit under GCO point 2.

f) A contribution without a S-o-b line and of significant size, without
   any other indication of its license.
   ⇒ Can _not_ be accepted. We have no indication that the author has
   released the work under a free license, therefore we must not
   distribute it.

Disclaimer: IANAL, TINLA

Ulrich

[1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Legally-Significant.html