1 |
Find another update of the copyright GLEP below. This takes further |
2 |
input from mailing lists and IRC into consideration. Main changes are: |
3 |
|
4 |
- The certificate of origin has been renamed from DCO to "Gentoo |
5 |
Certificate of Origin", because the original's conditions for |
6 |
modification require using a name that is not "confusingly similar". |
7 |
|
8 |
- The Linux DCO 1.1 can be used as an alternative to certify commits, |
9 |
if it is applicable. |
10 |
|
11 |
- The default documentation license for new projects is CC-BY-SA-4.0 |
12 |
(existing projects can either stay with 3.0, or upgrade). |
13 |
|
14 |
- The simplified form of the copyright notice now says "Gentoo Authors" |
15 |
(without the "The"). |
16 |
|
17 |
The source of the GLEP can be found at [1] (or included below); the |
18 |
rendered version is at [2]. |
19 |
|
20 |
Ulrich |
21 |
|
22 |
[1] ReST: https://gitweb.gentoo.org/data/glep.git/tree/glep-0076.rst |
23 |
[2] HTML: https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0076.html |
24 |
|
25 |
|
26 |
--- |
27 |
GLEP: 76 |
28 |
Title: Copyright Policy |
29 |
Author: Richard Freeman <rich0@g.o>, |
30 |
Alice Ferrazzi <alicef@g.o>, |
31 |
Ulrich Müller <ulm@g.o>, |
32 |
Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@g.o>, |
33 |
Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> |
34 |
Type: Informational |
35 |
Status: Draft |
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Version: 1 |
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Created: 2013-04-23 |
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Last-Modified: 2018-08-31 |
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Post-History: 2018-06-10, 2018-06-19, 2018-08-31 |
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Content-Type: text/x-rst |
41 |
--- |
42 |
|
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|
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Status |
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====== |
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|
47 |
The policies on this page have no effect! These are draft policies up |
48 |
for discussion, not final versions. |
49 |
|
50 |
|
51 |
Abstract |
52 |
======== |
53 |
|
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This GLEP introduces a copyright and licensing policy for Gentoo |
55 |
projects. It requires all contributions of software or documentation |
56 |
to be released under a free license, and to be accompanied by a |
57 |
certificate of origin. |
58 |
|
59 |
|
60 |
Motivation |
61 |
========== |
62 |
|
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The copyright ownership of Gentoo materials is ambiguous due to |
64 |
historical factors, and this GLEP attempts to improve the process |
65 |
going forward. |
66 |
|
67 |
In the beginning (2000 or earlier), the copyright header stated that |
68 |
*Gentoo Technologies, Inc.* was the copyright holder, without any |
69 |
formal paperwork. The formal assignment document was however only |
70 |
introduced in early 2004. The assignment had many objectors (mostly |
71 |
on the ``gentoo-core`` mailing list). The developer recruiting |
72 |
procedures attempted to require signing of the document as a condition |
73 |
for becoming a developer, but it was not applied to pre-existing |
74 |
developers, or those that objected. |
75 |
|
76 |
Later, the *Gentoo Foundation* was established, and copyrights were |
77 |
formally transferred (including nullifying original developer |
78 |
assignments to *Gentoo Technologies, Inc.*), and the copyright header |
79 |
was updated. The formal assignment document text was updated in 2006, |
80 |
but the formal assignment process had already been abandoned in |
81 |
mid-2004. |
82 |
|
83 |
Throughout this, the presence of copyright headers existed as a |
84 |
policy, and continues to exist to this day. Some files also still |
85 |
contain or have in the past contained additional copyright headers, |
86 |
attributing ownership to other parties. |
87 |
|
88 |
The policy to have copyright notices ascribing copyright ownership to |
89 |
the Gentoo Foundation caused an issue when Gentoo developers forked |
90 |
another project and hosted the fork on Gentoo infrastructure. To |
91 |
comply with the previous policy the copyright notices were modified, |
92 |
which caused concerns with the project the files were forked from. |
93 |
Our previous policy completely neglected the possibility that Gentoo |
94 |
might want to host files that were not created internally. |
95 |
|
96 |
Finally, since the early days of Gentoo new ideas around copyright |
97 |
licensing have become more popular, such as the FSFE's Fiduciary |
98 |
License Agreement [#FLA]_, which takes a copyleft approach to |
99 |
copyright licensing, while also better complying with copyright laws |
100 |
in nations that have author's rights. |
101 |
|
102 |
The goal here was to create a policy that was flexible enough to cover |
103 |
forks and situations where Gentoo would not own the majority of the |
104 |
copyright in a file. |
105 |
|
106 |
|
107 |
Specification |
108 |
============= |
109 |
|
110 |
Purpose / Scope |
111 |
--------------- |
112 |
|
113 |
This policy documents how Gentoo contributors comply and document |
114 |
copyright for any contributions made to Gentoo. Anyone committing |
115 |
documentation or sources to any repository hosted on Gentoo |
116 |
infrastructure or to any official Gentoo project (independently |
117 |
of hosting) must comply with this policy. Unofficial Gentoo projects |
118 |
are also recommended to use this policy. |
119 |
|
120 |
Questions regarding this policy should be directed to the Trustees |
121 |
or the ``gentoo-project`` mailing list. Any concerns over possible |
122 |
copyright violations should be directed to the Trustees if they cannot |
123 |
be worked out with the appropriate maintainer. |
124 |
|
125 |
|
126 |
Licensing of Gentoo Projects |
127 |
---------------------------- |
128 |
|
129 |
Every Gentoo project must abide by the Gentoo Social Contract |
130 |
[#SOCIAL-CONTRACT]_ and release its work under one or more of the |
131 |
following: |
132 |
|
133 |
a) The GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (GPL-2+) |
134 |
[#GPL-2]_. |
135 |
|
136 |
b) The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License |
137 |
(CC-BY-SA-4.0, only for documentation) [#CC-BY-SA-4.0]_. |
138 |
Existing projects may also stay with CC-BY-SA-3.0 [#CC-BY-SA-3.0]_. |
139 |
|
140 |
c) A license approved as GPL compatible by the Free Software |
141 |
Foundation [#GPL-COMPAT]_. |
142 |
|
143 |
Exceptions for other free software licenses will be granted by the |
144 |
Gentoo Foundation on a case by case basis. |
145 |
|
146 |
For easy reference, the license for each project should be documented |
147 |
on the wiki page at [#PROJECTS]_. |
148 |
|
149 |
|
150 |
Certificate of Origin |
151 |
--------------------- |
152 |
|
153 |
All commits to Gentoo project repositories shall be accompanied by a |
154 |
certificate of origin. The purpose of the certificate is to declare |
155 |
that the contribution can be modified and redistributed in accordance |
156 |
with the project's license. |
157 |
|
158 |
For commits made using a VCS, the committer shall certify agreement to |
159 |
the Certificate of Origin by adding ``Signed-off-by: Name <e-mail>`` |
160 |
to the commit message as a separate line. Committers must use their |
161 |
real name, i.e., the name that would appear in an official document |
162 |
like a passport. |
163 |
|
164 |
The following is the current Gentoo Certificate of Origin, revision 1: |
165 |
|
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By making a contribution to this project, I certify that: |
167 |
|
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1. The contribution was created in whole or in part by me, and I |
169 |
have the right to submit it under the free software license |
170 |
indicated in the file; or |
171 |
|
172 |
2. The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best |
173 |
of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate free software |
174 |
license, and I have the right under that license to submit that |
175 |
work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part by |
176 |
me, under the same free software license (unless I am permitted |
177 |
to submit under a different license), as indicated in the file; |
178 |
or |
179 |
|
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3. The contribution is a license text (or a file of similar nature), |
181 |
and verbatim distribution is allowed; or |
182 |
|
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4. The contribution was provided directly to me by some other |
184 |
person who certified 1., 2., 3., or 4., and I have not modified |
185 |
it. |
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|
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I understand and agree that this project and the contribution |
188 |
are public and that a record of the contribution (including all |
189 |
personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is |
190 |
maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with |
191 |
this project or the free software license(s) involved. |
192 |
|
193 |
The Gentoo Certificate of Origin is licensed under a Creative Commons |
194 |
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License [#CC-BY-SA-3.0]_. |
195 |
It is based on the Linux Kernel DCO [#OSDL-DCO]_, released by Open |
196 |
Source Development Labs, Inc. in 2005 under a CC-BY-SA-2.5 License. |
197 |
|
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Alternatively, and if it is applicable, committers are allowed to |
199 |
certify their commits with the Linux Kernel DCO 1.1. This shall be |
200 |
clearly indicated by adding ``(Linux DCO 1.1)`` at the end of the |
201 |
``Signed-off-by`` line. Using the Gentoo Certificate of Origin is |
202 |
strongly preferred, though. |
203 |
|
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|
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Copyright Attribution |
206 |
--------------------- |
207 |
|
208 |
All copyrightable files included in Gentoo projects must contain |
209 |
appropriate copyright and license notices, as defined by this policy. |
210 |
For files in textual format, these notices normally appear near the |
211 |
top of the file. When technical limitations do not allow for text |
212 |
notices in the file itself (e.g., for binary image file formats), |
213 |
copyright and license can be stated in an accompanying text file in |
214 |
the same directory. |
215 |
|
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A proper copyright notice reads:: |
217 |
|
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Copyright YEARS MAIN-CONTRIBUTOR [OTHER-CONTRIBUTOR]... [and others] |
219 |
|
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It must list the main copyright holder, who is usually the original |
221 |
author, or the contributor holding copyright to the largest portion |
222 |
of the file. Additional copyright holders can be listed, but this is |
223 |
normally not required. The "and others" text may be omitted if the |
224 |
explicitly listed contributors hold copyright to the entire file. |
225 |
|
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Anyone finding a file out of compliance should file a bug against the |
227 |
associated project/package providing as much information as possible. |
228 |
Files that are not brought into compliance within 60 days or upon a |
229 |
request for removal by a aggrieved copyright holder will be removed. |
230 |
Any concerns not addressed by a maintainer can be appealed to the |
231 |
Trustees. |
232 |
|
233 |
|
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Simplified Attribution |
235 |
---------------------- |
236 |
|
237 |
Alternatively, projects are welcome to use a simplified form of the |
238 |
copyright notice, which reads:: |
239 |
|
240 |
Copyright YEARS Gentoo Authors |
241 |
|
242 |
Projects using this scheme must track authorship in a VCS, unless they |
243 |
list all authors of copyrightable contributions in an ``AUTHORS`` file. |
244 |
|
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|
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Rationale |
247 |
========= |
248 |
|
249 |
Policy |
250 |
------ |
251 |
|
252 |
This document aims to provide a single consistent copyright policy for |
253 |
all Gentoo projects. It is explicitly enforced for all official Gentoo |
254 |
projects in order to protect the interests of Gentoo as a whole, |
255 |
including its contributors, developers and users. Additionally, it is |
256 |
enforced for all other projects hosted on Gentoo infrastructure in order |
257 |
to protect the Gentoo infrastructure owners and improve consistency. |
258 |
|
259 |
The copyright model is built on the DCO model used by the Linux kernel |
260 |
and requires all contributors to certify the legitimacy of their |
261 |
contributions. This also requires that they use their real name for |
262 |
signing; an anonymous certification or one under a pseudonym would not |
263 |
mean anything. |
264 |
|
265 |
In the future, a second stage of this policy may use a combination of |
266 |
the DCO model and an FLA model [#FLA]_ as it is used by different open |
267 |
source projects. Contributors would be able to freely choose whether |
268 |
they sign the FLA document or not. |
269 |
|
270 |
|
271 |
Licensing of Projects |
272 |
--------------------- |
273 |
|
274 |
The Social Contract mentions GPL-2 and CC-BY-SA-2.0, both with the |
275 |
option to use them in a later version ("at our discretion"). In order |
276 |
to facilitate interchange of software between different projects, we |
277 |
aim for uniformity of their licensing. Therefore, items a) and b) |
278 |
explicitly recommend the use of GPL-2+ and CC-BY-SA-4.0. The latter |
279 |
is restricted to be used for documentation, because Creative Commons |
280 |
themselves recommend against using their licenses for software |
281 |
[#CC-SOFTWARE]_. |
282 |
|
283 |
Other GPL-compatible free software licenses that are not explicitly |
284 |
listed are allowed by item c). This covers cases where compatibility |
285 |
to licenses used by upstream projects is necessary. (For example, |
286 |
the Gentoo BSD project may want to use the 2-clause or 3-clause BSD |
287 |
license). |
288 |
|
289 |
By default, GPL-incompatible licenses (e.g., the CDDL) are not |
290 |
allowed, because their use would hinder interchange of code between |
291 |
Gentoo projects. However, the Foundation can grant exceptions to |
292 |
this, as long as the license in question is a free software or open |
293 |
source license. |
294 |
|
295 |
|
296 |
Changes to the Certificate of Origin |
297 |
------------------------------------ |
298 |
|
299 |
The Gentoo Certificate of Origin rev. 1 has been based on Linux Kernel |
300 |
DCO 1.1 [#OSDL-DCO]_. It features the following modifications from |
301 |
the original: |
302 |
|
303 |
i. The enumeration has been modified to use numeric points. |
304 |
|
305 |
ii. Additional point 3. has been inserted: |
306 |
|
307 |
3. The contribution is a license text (or a file of similar |
308 |
nature), and verbatim distribution is allowed; or |
309 |
|
310 |
iii. The original point (c) has shifted to become point 4., and has |
311 |
been updated to account for the additional point 3. |
312 |
|
313 |
iv. The original point (d) has been transformed into a stand-alone |
314 |
paragraph following the enumeration. |
315 |
|
316 |
v. The term "open source" has been replaced by "free software" |
317 |
throughout. |
318 |
|
319 |
The new point was deemed necessary to allow committing license files |
320 |
into the Gentoo repository, since those files usually do not permit |
321 |
modification. It has been established that adding a clear provision |
322 |
for this case is better than excluding those commits from compliance |
323 |
with the Certificate of Origin. Debian was facing a similar problem |
324 |
[#DEBIAN-LICENSE]_. |
325 |
|
326 |
The update of point (c) was necessary to allow the new clause being |
327 |
certified by the person providing the contribution. |
328 |
|
329 |
The term "free software" is used for consistency with the language |
330 |
of the Gentoo Social Contract [#SOCIAL-CONTRACT]_. |
331 |
|
332 |
The remaining changes were merely editorial. The original point (d) |
333 |
is not part of the *or* statement joining the other points, so keeping |
334 |
it in a paragraph separate from the enumeration is more appropriate. |
335 |
|
336 |
Addition of another point for public domain material was also |
337 |
considered. However, it is preferred if all contributions carry |
338 |
an explicit license notice that allows their certification under |
339 |
point 1. or 2. If necessary, license tools like Creative Commons |
340 |
CC0 [#CC0-1.0]_ or Public Domain Mark [#CC-PDM-1.0]_ can be used. |
341 |
|
342 |
|
343 |
Copyright Notice |
344 |
---------------- |
345 |
|
346 |
Especially for ebuild repositories, constantly keeping track of the |
347 |
main copyright holder of any file would be rather inconvenient and |
348 |
tedious. Therefore, projects are free to use either a traditional |
349 |
copyright notice listing the individual author(s), or a simplified |
350 |
notice with an attribution to the "Gentoo Authors". The latter |
351 |
resembles the scheme used by the Chromium project [#CHROMIUM]_. |
352 |
|
353 |
|
354 |
Acknowledgements |
355 |
================ |
356 |
|
357 |
Many people have participated in invaluable discussions on this GLEP. |
358 |
In particular, the authors would like to thank David Abbott, |
359 |
Roy Bamford, Kristian Fiskerstrand, Andreas K. Hüttel, Manuel Rüger, |
360 |
Matija Šuklje, Matthew Thode, and Alec Warner for their input. |
361 |
|
362 |
|
363 |
References |
364 |
========== |
365 |
|
366 |
.. [#SOCIAL-CONTRACT] Gentoo Social Contract, |
367 |
https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contract.html |
368 |
|
369 |
.. [#GPL-2] GNU General Public License, version 2 or later, |
370 |
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html |
371 |
|
372 |
.. [#CC-BY-SA-4.0] Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 |
373 |
International License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ |
374 |
|
375 |
.. [#CC-BY-SA-3.0] Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 |
376 |
Unported License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ |
377 |
|
378 |
.. [#GPL-COMPAT] GPL-compatible free software licenses, |
379 |
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses |
380 |
|
381 |
.. [#PROJECTS] Licensing of Gentoo projects, |
382 |
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Licenses/Licensing_of_Gentoo_projects |
383 |
|
384 |
.. [#OSDL-DCO] Open Source Development Labs, Inc., |
385 |
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1, |
386 |
https://web.archive.org/web/20060524185355/http://www.osdlab.org/newsroom/press_releases/2004/2004_05_24_dco.html |
387 |
|
388 |
.. [#FLA] FSFE Legal: Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA), |
389 |
https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/fla.en.html |
390 |
|
391 |
.. [#CC-SOFTWARE] Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software? |
392 |
https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software |
393 |
|
394 |
.. [#DEBIAN-LICENSE] [debian-legal] License of the GPL license, |
395 |
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2018/04/msg00006.html |
396 |
|
397 |
.. [#CC0-1.0] Creative Commons: CC0 1.0 Universal, |
398 |
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ |
399 |
|
400 |
.. [#CC-PDM-1.0] Creative Commons: Public Domain Mark 1.0, |
401 |
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ |
402 |
|
403 |
.. [#CHROMIUM] Chromium: Contributing Code, |
404 |
https://www.chromium.org/developers/contributing-code#TOC-Legal-stuff |
405 |
|
406 |
|
407 |
Copyright |
408 |
========= |
409 |
|
410 |
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 |
411 |
Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit |
412 |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. |