On 2016-01-17 14:36:23 +0800 (+0800), Thomas Goirand wrote: [...] > What I wrote is that I feel like the currently situation makes it > very blurry for one to tell who is the copyright holder(s). I'm > seeking a way to fix this.
I fail to see what's blurry about it. The contributors who feel compelled to acknowledge their copyright or that of their employer do so by adding or updating a comment at the top of the file to which they're contributing. This is typical of many (I hesitate to say "most" though I suspect it may be) projects, and is a long-standing part of our culture in the greater free software community. I am definitely (and happily) not a lawyer, but the instructions at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html#apply indicate that at least one copyright notice is expected when applying the Apache License, Version 2.0. There is also nothing out of the ordinary with files having multiple copyright holders declared (because they made significant copyrightable contributions to the same file at different points in time), nor with different files in a project having different copyright holders. Further, section 4c of the license indicates that copyright and attribution notices must be redistributed even in derivative works, and it seems pretty obvious that any patch updating a file results in a derivative work of the prior version of that same file, so retaining our existing copyright notices is necessary (in my non-lawyer opinion). > It looks like its another failed attempt, as some (including you) > are opposed to do any of the things I proposed, and nobody has a > better solution (and I don't see how writing to the legal list > will change anything). I suppose I can only give-up. I am (and probably others are as well) unlikely to be convinced without prominent lawyers who possess expertise in free software and copyright law weighing in on efficacy and viability of your proposed changes. Also suggestions which have any bearing on the responsibilities of the OpenStack Foundation (such as switching to a copyright assignment model) would need input from their legal counsel, and possibly even a majority vote of the foundation membership to actually enact. -- Jeremy Stanley __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: [email protected]?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
