Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Roy Bamford]

On 2015.02.18 07:40, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Feb 2015 06:39:51 -0500
> Mike Frysinger  wrote:
> 
> > the policy is not "it must be Gentoo copyright", but "it must have 
> a
> > header that says Gentoo copyright even though there's no legal 
> basis
> > for it".
> 
> Correct, but I have my doubts about the allegedly wobbly legal basis.
> I
> do vividly recall reading these:
> 
> 
>  en/policy.xml>
> 
> Copyright in ebuilds (and documentation) should always be assigned to
> Gentoo Technologies. Developers must never put their own names in
> copyright lines. For more information, please see
> 
>  proj/en/devrel/copyright-assignment.xml>
> 
> (Page moved to
> 
>  proj/en/devrel/copyright/index.xml>)
> 
[snip]

> 
>  jer
> 
> 
> 


Here's some history ...

Gentoo Technologies Inc. was interested in using the Gentoo codebase 
commercially. It was not a financial success and the assets of Gentoo 
Technologies Inc. were transferred to the Gentoo Foundation Inc. when 
drobbins left Gentoo. That would be about 2004, when the Foundation 
was established. Commercial use was easier if Gentoo Technologies Inc. 
held the copyright.

Its unclear if anyone actually completed copyright assignment paperwork 
at any time. The legal standing of the ebuild header is also unclear as 
it has never been tested in court.

The remaining idea behind it today is that it might ensure that the 
Foundation is the target of any legal action resulting from an ebuild 
and conversely can take legal action to defend an ebuild.
I say 'might' as international copyright is a minefield. Its wider than 
just ebuilds, its wherever Foundation copyright is asserted.

Both Gentoo Technologies Inc. and Gentoo Foundation Inc. were/are New 
Mexico legal entities, so are subject to New Mexico law. Of course, if 
you are not in New Mexico, or even the USA, that law may not apply to 
you and that's where the minefield starts.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
trustees


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 9:07 AM, Peter Stuge  wrote:
> Rich Freeman wrote:
>>
>> The only things devs need to do with respect to copyright is follow
>> the law
>
> Ah, but which law? I understand that law in e.g. Germany does not
> permit non-natural persons to own copyright. The public domain
> concept is also not recognized world-wide.
>
> So a German citizen who wants to contribute an ebuild now has a
> significant legal questionmark on their hands, when actually they
> just want to publish an ebuild.

We don't ask every Gentoo developer to independently formulate a
copyright policy.

They just have to follow the policy.

Gentoo developers do not need to worry about whether copyright
assignment exists in Germany.  They just have to stick "Copyright
Gentoo Foundation" at the top of their ebuilds.  Whether that policy
makes sense is a different matter, which is why there is a desire to
improve the policy.  Gentoo devs are not required to participate in
these discussions, but they will be required to follow a new policy if
it is enacted.

>
>> and ensure that ebuilds have the correct copyright notice.
>
> Define correct... ;)

# Copyright - Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2

That is the current policy, and is correct by definition.

Of course, we want to improve on this.  However, all a dev needs to
know today is to do it this way.

>
> I think Gentoo's policy of requiring copyright assignment would be
> better replaced with a policy of requiring a (ideally specific) very
> permissive license, something like MIT or BSD-2.
>

That is part of my draft proposal, though it doesn't specify which
license we'd use.

>
>> Gentoo is very careful to comply with copyright law
>
> Sure. Being governed by US law is a whole different topic.
>

We endeavor to follow the law everywhere.  Whether the current policy
does so is a different topic indeed.  :)

I'm not saying that things are perfect.  I'm just saying that Gentoo
devs don't have to understand copyright law everywhere on the planet
to comply.  Our current policies are fairly simple.  They might or
might not be too simple, but the concern I was replying to was just
the concern that understanding copyright policy is a burden on new
developers.  The current policy is very simple and shouldn't really be
a burden to understand.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Peter Stuge]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> >> This is part of the set of topics which we
> >> cover outside the scope of the quizzes.
> >
> > A brief comment from reality is that this legal problem is quit
> > likely a significant hurdle for many potential developers - as for me.
> >
> > If you want contributing to be easy, overhead like this can't exist.
> 
> It isn't clear to me what the overhead is here.
> 
> The only things devs need to do with respect to copyright is follow
> the law

Ah, but which law? I understand that law in e.g. Germany does not
permit non-natural persons to own copyright. The public domain
concept is also not recognized world-wide.

So a German citizen who wants to contribute an ebuild now has a
significant legal questionmark on their hands, when actually they
just want to publish an ebuild.


> and ensure that ebuilds have the correct copyright notice.

Define correct... ;)


> It would be nice if we could just tell our developer candidates that
> they don't have to be concerned with copyright at all, but that would
> not be very good for any of us.

Every author of every work is automatically concerned with copyright.

I think Gentoo's policy of requiring copyright assignment would be
better replaced with a policy of requiring a (ideally specific) very
permissive license, something like MIT or BSD-2.


> Gentoo is very careful to comply with copyright law

Sure. Being governed by US law is a whole different topic.


//Peter

Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 7:28 AM, Peter Stuge  wrote:
> Justin (jlec) wrote:
>> This is part of the set of topics which we
>> cover outside the scope of the quizzes.
>
> A brief comment from reality is that this legal problem is quit
> likely a significant hurdle for many potential developers - as for me.
>
> If you want contributing to be easy, overhead like this can't exist.

It isn't clear to me what the overhead is here.

The only things devs need to do with respect to copyright is follow
the law and ensure that ebuilds have the correct copyright notice.
Following the law doesn't always make things easier, but that isn't
something we really have any choice in.  Putting the correct copyright
notice at the top of your ebuilds isn't that difficult - it is already
in the ebuild template and any other ebuild in the tree you might copy
from.

There are concerns that the current policy isn't ideal legally and
that it restricts our options for accepting outside code.  Those are
legitimate concerns, but any change isn't likely to make things any
easier on contributors.  In fact, many of the potential improvements
are likely to make things harder, which is a big reason why there
hasn't been a huge rush to change things.

It would be nice if we could just tell our developer candidates that
they don't have to be concerned with copyright at all, but that would
not be very good for any of us.  Our mirror sponsors would drop us
like hot potatoes, anybody using us for professional work would be
concerned about needing to double-check everything we do so that they
don't get in trouble, and sooner or later we could end up getting sued
by somebody or at least subject to DMCA takedowns.  Gentoo is very
careful to comply with copyright law, and when we do struggle with
issues they tend to be in very gray areas (which we usually end up
mirror restricting anyway to keep our mirror sponsors out of any
risk).

While the trustees and members of the licensing team tend to get into
discussions around legal details (often tapping into outside resources
when doing so), the average developer really just needs to make sure
that they commit their own work into the tree itself, have permission
for Gentoo to use the work of others, that they stick the standard
copyright notice in their ebuilds, and that anything in a SRC_URI is
under a redistributable license or set RESTRICT="mirror".  Obviously
this is a quick summary and not a substitute for the devmanual - I'm
sure there are one-off situations that come up that I'm not thinking
of.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Peter Stuge]

Justin (jlec) wrote:
> This is part of the set of topics which we
> cover outside the scope of the quizzes.

A brief comment from reality is that this legal problem is quit
likely a significant hurdle for many potential developers - as for me.

If you want contributing to be easy, overhead like this can't exist.

Think Shanzhai, not DMCA.


//Peter

Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Justin (jlec)]

On 18/02/15 09:48, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Feb 2015 09:34:21 +0100
> "Justin (jlec)"  wrote:
> 
>> At the end of the review session we ask the recruits to fix an ebuild
>> which has numerous technical and, as mentioned, legal aspects to take
>> care of.
> 
> That's a novelty I wasn't aware of, then. The technical
> practicalities of copyright assignment have a legal basis which I
> assume the test ebuild question(s) doesn't quiz recruits on.
> 
> 
> jer
> 

No, explicit question about that. This is part of the set of topics which we
cover outside the scope of the quizzes.

Justin



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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2015 09:34:21 +0100
"Justin (jlec)"  wrote:

> At the end of the review session we ask the recruits to fix an ebuild
> which has numerous technical and, as mentioned, legal aspects to take
> care of.

That's a novelty I wasn't aware of, then. The technical
practicalities of copyright assignment have a legal basis which I
assume the test ebuild question(s) doesn't quiz recruits on.


jer

Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Justin (jlec)]

On 18/02/15 09:12, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Feb 2015 08:48:19 +0100
> "Justin (jlec)"  wrote:
> 
>> On 18/02/15 08:40, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
>>> I seem to recall the developer quizzes may have had (or indeed
>>> requested) some more information on this matter.
>>
>> The test ebuild focuses on this topic.
> 
> What is that?
> 
> 
>  jer
> 

At the end of the review session we ask the recruits to fix an ebuild which has
numerous technical and, as mentioned, legal aspects to take care of.

Justin



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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2015 08:48:19 +0100
"Justin (jlec)"  wrote:

> On 18/02/15 08:40, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> > I seem to recall the developer quizzes may have had (or indeed
> > requested) some more information on this matter.
> 
> The test ebuild focuses on this topic.

What is that?


 jer

Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Justin (jlec)]

On 18/02/15 08:40, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> I seem to recall the developer quizzes may have had (or indeed
> requested) some more information on this matter.

The test ebuild focuses on this topic.



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[gentoo-dev] ebuild copyright assignment

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2015 06:39:51 -0500
Mike Frysinger  wrote:

> the policy is not "it must be Gentoo copyright", but "it must have a
> header that says Gentoo copyright even though there's no legal basis
> for it".

Correct, but I have my doubts about the allegedly wobbly legal basis. I
do vividly recall reading these:




Copyright in ebuilds (and documentation) should always be assigned to
Gentoo Technologies. Developers must never put their own names in
copyright lines. For more information, please see



(Page moved to

)

This was the pseudo-legal language in place when I became a developer,
and as of this day I still assume all ebuilds' copyright MUST be
assigned to the project. The language does seem to have disappeared
from the website, though. Regardless, the mechanism was that by way of
adding that header, you assign all rights to the Gentoo Foundation,
nee Gentoo Technologies.

I seem to recall the developer quizzes may have had (or indeed
requested) some more information on this matter.

I seem to recall the wobbly legal basis assumed that the entire ebuild
format was copyrighted, which I would agree is unenforceable. But the
language that used to say "all ebuilds' copyrights should be assigned
to [Gentoo]" would still hold.

Note that I am not talking about QA actions or other trivial stuff that
happened in the tree one day here - I'm just wondering where the legal
language from 2004 went.


 jer