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

[Raymond Jennings]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 12:24 AM Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:

> >>>>> On Wed, 14 Nov 2018, William Hubbs wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 06:17:17PM -0800, Rich Freeman wrote:
> >> So, the purpose of allowing specific copyright holders to be named
> >> was to cover cases where we're forking foreign code, not to basically
> >> introduce a variant on the BSD advertising clause. IMO people who are
> >> only willing to contribute FOSS if their name gets put in a prominent
> >> location might do better to contribute elsewhere.
>
> +1000
>
> Maybe the policy for the Gentoo repository should just say that, namely
> that traditional copyright notices are only allowed for imported foreign
> code. Anything committed directly to the repository and any update of an
> existing file would be required to carry the simplified "Gentoo Authors"
> copyright notice, without any exceptions allowed.
>
> Can someone come up with a good wording for this?


In my opinion the best wording belongs in python as a check in repoman and
the qa scripts monitoring PRs on github ;).


> > Do you feel this way about corporations as well? Do you think the
> > Linux kernel maintainers should go and rip out all copyright notices
> > other than Linus Torvalds and maybe the Linux Foundation?
>
> Why would corporations be different from individual authors? Under the
> legislation here, corporations cannot even hold copyright (or rather,
> Urheberrecht) of a work.
>
> >> The purpose of a copyright notice is to declare that the file is
> >> copyrighted, and that is it.
>
> Exactly.
>
> >> It isn't a comprehensive list of everybody who holds a copyright on
> >> the file.
> >>
> >> It isn't a revision history.
> >>
> >> There is no need to list various mixes of years and authors.  Just
> >> list the first and last year, and whatever copyright holders are
> >> necessary.
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> But, if you had to have multiple lines, then just wrap the existing
> >> notice.  Don't turn it into some kind of revision history.  Just list
> >> one year range and whatever list of entities you feel compelled to
> >> list.  That is the proper way to do a notice.
>
> > No sir, it isn't.
>
> > Look anywhere outside the Gentoo tree. For that matter, take the Linux
> > kernel, or even in the systemd source, there are several places with
> > multiple copyright notices in them.
>
> Are these the only arguments you have?
>
> To say it again, ebuilds have a copyright notice for exactly two
> reasons:
>
> - to protect us against the "innocent infringement" defense under
> U.S. law, and
>
> - because the GPL-2 requires in section 1 to "appropriately publish
> on each copy an appropriate copyright notice".
>
> For both of these, it is irrelevant what the precise contents of the
> notice is. If you made a significant contribution to the file, then you
> can claim copyright for it, even if there is no copyright notice at all,
> of if you aren't mentioned in it.
>
> IANAL, but I think the case for being listed there explicitly is very
> weak.
>
> Ulrich
>