Re: [gentoo-project] Council meeting 2021-07-11 - call for agenda items

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 4:28 PM Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 07, 2021 at 07:31:22AM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 5:27 AM Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:
> > >
> > > >>>>> On Wed, 07 Jul 2021, Robin H Johnson wrote:
> > >
> > > > TL;DR:
> > > > Please change the format of metadata/AUTHORS to yaml-based list of "key:
> > > > [value,...]" where key is the identity of a Gentoo developer, and the
> > > > list is copyright holders that the developer has worked for.
> > >
> > you can't assume that somebody introducing
> > commits owned by some entity is employed or even associated with that
> > entity.
> I populated the example list based on tying the "Copyright: Sony Interactive
> Entertainment Inc." commit messages to the author of those commits.

I was responding to the wording of your proposal: "the list is
copyright holders that the developer has worked for."

If I commit something copyrighted by Google, that doesn't make me a
Google employee, or suggest that I've done work on their behalf in any
way.  I (probably without their knowledge) just copy/pasted their code
into the repo, under the terms of whatever license they released the
code under.

You could change the wording to:

"...where key is the identify of a Gentoo developer, and the list are
entities who own the copyright to parts of commits the developer has
made."

I really don't see the value though in making this association.  What
good is it to know that somewhere in somebody's long list of commits
that there might be a few lines originally created by the Apache
Foundation or whatever?

In the case of actual employment it might make more sense if there are
extensive works for hire, but not if somebody just one time committed
one patch file that held somebody else's copyright.


--
Rich