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>>>>> On Thu, 11 Oct 2018, Andrew Savchenko wrote: |
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|
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> On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 09:43:52 +0200 Ulrich Mueller wrote: |
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>> The new copyright policy (GLEP 76) leaves it to projects to decide |
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>> whether they use the long form or the simplified form of the copyright |
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>> attribution. I would like to ask the council to decide that the |
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>> simplified attribution [1] shall be used for ebuilds in the Gentoo |
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>> repository. |
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|
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> I'd like to voice strongly against this motion. |
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|
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> Rationale: |
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|
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> - We have out of the Gentoo repository ebuilds which may be |
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> incorporated in the main repository and are licensed properly but |
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> an author requires his copyright in the first line to be preserved. |
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|
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The author's copyright will be preserved, regardless if he is listed in |
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a copyright line or not. It would even be preserved if there wasn't any |
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copyright notice at all. |
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|
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The sole purpose of having a copyright notice is to protect us against |
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an "innocent infringement" defense under U.S. law. It really doesn't |
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matter much who is listed there (so we can list "Gentoo Authors" which |
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isn't even a legal entity), as long as we have a notice at all. |
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|
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> GPL-2 allows us to use such ebuilds, but our past copyright policy |
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> mandating "Gentoo Foundation" doesn't, as well as proposed motion |
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> which mandates "Gentoo Authors" instead of the list of authors |
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> including main author if they require so. |
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|
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It is virtually impossible to account for all authors of an ebuild, |
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and listing "Gentoo Authors" is only done because of practical |
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considerations (as I had outlined in the rationale). Also, please don't |
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confuse the copyright notice with an attribution of authorship. |
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The latter is achieved by the Git (or another VCS) commit information. |
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Again, this is already outlined in GLEP 76: "Projects using this scheme |
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[namely, 'Gentoo Authors'] must track authorship in a VCS". |
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|
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> - GLEP 76 already did significant harm to our community by |
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> outlawing current anonymous or pseudonymous contributions. Moreover |
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> we have people who want to join community, but keep their identity |
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> hidden. This is understandable, especially for security or privacy |
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> oriented software. The harm should go no further. We have a lot of |
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> talks how we need more developers, but what we are doing in many |
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> steps including GLEP 76 is exactly the opposite: we are creating |
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> additional barriers due to vague and bureaucratic reasons. |
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How is that relevant for the proposal at hand? |
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|
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> Of course if authors wants to use "Gentoo Authors" this should be |
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> allowed, especially for automatic migration from the "Gentoo |
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> Foundation" line. But we must preserve the right to use explicit |
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> list of authors (including "and others" if necessary) if a |
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> maintainer wants so. |
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|
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Exactly. The aim of the "simplified attribution" policy is to simplify |
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modification of ebuilds, because contributors (whether Gentoo developers |
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or users) shouldn't have to think about the copyright line. |
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|
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The purpose of the proposal explicitly is *not* to stop anybody from |
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adding an ebuild with a preexisting copyright notice. However, we should |
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make it clear that we strongly prefer the simplified form for ebuilds in |
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the Gentoo repository, entirely for practical reasons. |
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|
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Ulrich |