| 1 |
>>>>> On Thu, 11 Oct 2018, Andrew Savchenko wrote: |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 09:43:52 +0200 Ulrich Mueller wrote: |
| 4 |
>> The new copyright policy (GLEP 76) leaves it to projects to decide |
| 5 |
>> whether they use the long form or the simplified form of the copyright |
| 6 |
>> attribution. I would like to ask the council to decide that the |
| 7 |
>> simplified attribution [1] shall be used for ebuilds in the Gentoo |
| 8 |
>> repository. |
| 9 |
|
| 10 |
> I'd like to voice strongly against this motion. |
| 11 |
|
| 12 |
> Rationale: |
| 13 |
|
| 14 |
> - We have out of the Gentoo repository ebuilds which may be |
| 15 |
> incorporated in the main repository and are licensed properly but |
| 16 |
> an author requires his copyright in the first line to be preserved. |
| 17 |
|
| 18 |
The author's copyright will be preserved, regardless if he is listed in |
| 19 |
a copyright line or not. It would even be preserved if there wasn't any |
| 20 |
copyright notice at all. |
| 21 |
|
| 22 |
The sole purpose of having a copyright notice is to protect us against |
| 23 |
an "innocent infringement" defense under U.S. law. It really doesn't |
| 24 |
matter much who is listed there (so we can list "Gentoo Authors" which |
| 25 |
isn't even a legal entity), as long as we have a notice at all. |
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
> GPL-2 allows us to use such ebuilds, but our past copyright policy |
| 28 |
> mandating "Gentoo Foundation" doesn't, as well as proposed motion |
| 29 |
> which mandates "Gentoo Authors" instead of the list of authors |
| 30 |
> including main author if they require so. |
| 31 |
|
| 32 |
It is virtually impossible to account for all authors of an ebuild, |
| 33 |
and listing "Gentoo Authors" is only done because of practical |
| 34 |
considerations (as I had outlined in the rationale). Also, please don't |
| 35 |
confuse the copyright notice with an attribution of authorship. |
| 36 |
The latter is achieved by the Git (or another VCS) commit information. |
| 37 |
Again, this is already outlined in GLEP 76: "Projects using this scheme |
| 38 |
[namely, 'Gentoo Authors'] must track authorship in a VCS". |
| 39 |
|
| 40 |
> - GLEP 76 already did significant harm to our community by |
| 41 |
> outlawing current anonymous or pseudonymous contributions. Moreover |
| 42 |
> we have people who want to join community, but keep their identity |
| 43 |
> hidden. This is understandable, especially for security or privacy |
| 44 |
> oriented software. The harm should go no further. We have a lot of |
| 45 |
> talks how we need more developers, but what we are doing in many |
| 46 |
> steps including GLEP 76 is exactly the opposite: we are creating |
| 47 |
> additional barriers due to vague and bureaucratic reasons. |
| 48 |
|
| 49 |
How is that relevant for the proposal at hand? |
| 50 |
|
| 51 |
> Of course if authors wants to use "Gentoo Authors" this should be |
| 52 |
> allowed, especially for automatic migration from the "Gentoo |
| 53 |
> Foundation" line. But we must preserve the right to use explicit |
| 54 |
> list of authors (including "and others" if necessary) if a |
| 55 |
> maintainer wants so. |
| 56 |
|
| 57 |
Exactly. The aim of the "simplified attribution" policy is to simplify |
| 58 |
modification of ebuilds, because contributors (whether Gentoo developers |
| 59 |
or users) shouldn't have to think about the copyright line. |
| 60 |
|
| 61 |
The purpose of the proposal explicitly is *not* to stop anybody from |
| 62 |
adding an ebuild with a preexisting copyright notice. However, we should |
| 63 |
make it clear that we strongly prefer the simplified form for ebuilds in |
| 64 |
the Gentoo repository, entirely for practical reasons. |
| 65 |
|
| 66 |
Ulrich |
Archives