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

[M. J. Everitt]

On 14/11/18 20:02, Patrick McLean wrote:
>
> It would also discourage developers under deadlines from contributing
> upstream rather than just adding to a local private repository. There
> are some companies that strongly encourage their employees to upstream
> any work done on an open source project, if any signifigant contribution
> turns in to a git hsitory deep-dive, then they may opt to not
> contribute at all, especially if they are under a deadline.
>
> This discussion keeps me wondering whether Gentoo wants to make it easy
> and painless to accept outside contribution (or coprorate
> contribution), or if they want to make it so painful for corporations
> to contribute that most opt not to do it at all. I personally think
> that the more developer time that can spent on improving Gentoo, the
> better. If increasing the developers fixing bugs and adding features
> requires accepting some extra lines (or one _very_ long line at the
> start of a file) at the top of some small percentage of ebuilds in the
> tree, then it is worth it.
>
> rich0 mentioned earlier in this thread that developer eyeballs is far
> more valuable than CPU time, isn't having paid developers working on
> fixing and improving Gentoo valuable? That can add up to quite a large
> amount of developer time that would not otherwise be spent. We have
> lost many developers who had life changes that reduced their free time
> to work on Gentoo, in the case where a developer can work on Gentoo in
> their day job, then that can help avoid losing valuable contributions.
>
I wouldn't be sure the proponents of these proposals have the 'big picture'
in mind .. or they wouldn't even have found discussion or questioning here.

There seems to be a remarkable amount of 'busy-work' being done in the
echelons of Gentoo, and not a lot of work on fixing bugs, updating packages
and developing new features ...

That said, I credit those developers who are tirelessly and thanklessly
grinding away. You know who you are, and I take my hat off to you, and
thank you for your hard work.