1 |
>>>>> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018, William Hubbs wrote: |
2 |
|
3 |
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 06:50:52PM +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote: |
4 |
>> | * Notice identifies the copyright owner at the time the work was |
5 |
>> | first published for parties seeking permission to use the work. |
6 |
>> | * Notice identifies the year of first publication, which may be |
7 |
>> | used to determine the term of copyright protection in the case of |
8 |
>> | an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire. |
9 |
>> | * Notice may prevent the work from becoming an orphan work by |
10 |
>> | identifying the copyright owner and specifying the term of the |
11 |
>> | copyright. |
12 |
>> |
13 |
>> For "indentifying the copyright owner" nothing short of a complete |
14 |
>> list will suffice. Especially, a notice like the following (which |
15 |
>> mentions only "Gentoo Authors" and "Sony Interactive Entertainment |
16 |
>> Inc.") does not help with that at all (i.e., it is no better than the |
17 |
>> simplified notice): |
18 |
>> https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/sys-cluster/ceph/ceph-13.2.2-r2.ebuild?id=5f77c21f23bf1c4cfb9e68be7aa27669c8146e8e#n1 |
19 |
|
20 |
> Remember that in the US, SIE is a legal entity, so it can hold |
21 |
> copyrights, just like a person can. It is like "Gentoo Foundation, |
22 |
> Inc." |
23 |
|
24 |
> So, there would be two contributors in that ebuild: "Gentoo Authors" |
25 |
> and SIE. |
26 |
|
27 |
There are many more contributors that aren't listed. Therefore |
28 |
indentifying the copyright owners is not possible without looking into |
29 |
the git log. And in practice identifying them won't help much, because |
30 |
you'd still need their contact information which may be difficult to |
31 |
obtain. (For example, if we wanted to relicense the tree to GPL-2 |
32 |
*or later*, I'd expect that contacting all contributors or their heirs |
33 |
would be close to impossible.) |
34 |
|
35 |
However, I don't say that we should even aim for the above three items |
36 |
from the copyright office's document. The point is that "Gentoo Authors" |
37 |
alone is sufficient to protect against the "innocent infringement" |
38 |
defense, and mentioning any contributor in addition does not add any |
39 |
value. |
40 |
|
41 |
Ulrich |