Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Walter Fey]

Hallo,

it is better to end this thread.

I do not intend any longer to submit my hamradio packages to Packman. In 
order to free the limited resources of PMBS  the packages will be 
removed very soon from my home project.


I will continue to update all packages necessary for my daily "busyness" 
as hamradio operator in my home project at the openSUSE build service. 
But I will not continue to maintain the hamradio project and remove 
myself as user/maintainer. If somebody is interested to do this work in 
future he can contact the remaining users/maintainers.


My suggestion to the Packman Team is to rework the point "What is the 
Packman team doing" on your homepage. I understand the text "More 
specifically, we do so for software that is not shipped as part of 
distributions or that are shipped as an outdated version."  that the 
hamradio packages would fit exactly to this.


For openSUSE it would be better to find somebody who is able and willing 
to maintain the hamradio packages. Very often, when I talked to other 
hamradio operators, they told me that openSUSE is no solution for them, 
since there are no hamradio packages available like for Fedora and 
Ubuntu. They always were astonished to hear about the hamradio project. 
To publish these packages in official releases is a good idea as long as 
they are kept really up to date. Very often, only the latest code from 
github or sourceforge.net fulfills this. For example, hamlib has to 
support transceivers/receivers, which are new on the market, as soon as 
the update is available at 
https://github.com/N0NB/hamlib/commits/master. A step back to the last 
release, as it was done in hardware/sdr, was a bad idea. Fldigi should 
not be a standalone package in a distribution. All Fl... packages from 
http://www.w1hkj.com/ should be published together, since they all work 
together as a NBEMS /(Narrow Band Emergency Messaging S/oftware) suite.


73, Walter DL8FCL

(73 = Ham lingo for "best regards." Used on phone, morse and digital 
modes toward the end of a contact bettwen hamradio operators) - 
http://www.arrl.org/ham-radio-glossary




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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey) (Walter Fey)

[Martin Pluskal]

On Thu, 2017-08-03 at 09:47 +0200, Luigi Baldoni wrote:
> Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2017 at 12:23 AM
> From: "Walter Fey" 
> > 
> > I agreed to this and informed him, that due to serious legal
> > concerns,
> > I cannot publish the copyright remark that is pointing to SUSE
> > LINUX GmbH,
> > Nuernberg, Germany without a  written approval from this company.
> 
> This is the part I understand the least.
> What would be the legal ramifications or even just the risks in
> attributing copyright to a third party? Or is mentioning a trademark
> that
> concerns you?
> 
> Furthermore, you wouldn't even have to use the "Copyright SUSE GmbH"
> line.
> Several other packagers just put in their name, current year and
> everyone
> who adds something to it would add his own.
> 
I also do not understand this - and in hardware:sdr some packages have
copyright attributet to SUSE, some just author of package, some both.

Apart from this I fail to understand resistance to having hamradio in
Leap and Factory as seen in [1] - there is nothing preventing creation
of maintenance updates updating packages released in Leap if there is
sound reason for doing so, and for Factory - it is by definition kept
up to date.

1. https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/477291

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey) (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On 3 August 2017 at 09:47, Luigi Baldoni  wrote:
> Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2017 at 12:23 AM
> From: "Walter Fey" 
>>
>> I agreed to this and informed him, that due to serious legal concerns,
>> I cannot publish the copyright remark that is pointing to SUSE LINUX GmbH,
>> Nuernberg, Germany without a  written approval from this company.
>
> This is the part I understand the least.
> What would be the legal ramifications or even just the risks in
> attributing copyright to a third party? Or is mentioning a trademark that
> concerns you?

I also don't understand this part - especially as most FOSS licenses
require a copyright attribution for involved authors and require them
to be preserved when redistributing

eg: from https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

"The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

eg. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html

"Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two
elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such
as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying
permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of
the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL)."

"If you have copied code from other programs covered by the same
license, copy their copyright notices too. Put all the copyright
notices together, right near the top of each file."

In addition to many licenses requiring an explicit copyright notice
and the preservation of it, Germany, UK and the US (as the three most
relevant legal authorities which OBS operates under) are all
signatories to the Berne convention which gives "automatic protection"
to copyrightable works under their jurisdiction.

This complicates matters with FOSS licenses which consider copyright
attribution as 'optional' but require it's preservation when source is
being redistributed. An 'implied' copyright assignment might not be
enforceable in all countries, and yet openSUSE's OBS can, and does,
redistribute software & source in all countries.

It's the openSUSE's projects opinion that to ensure the software's
free distributability the best approach is to require the explicit
declaration of copyright attribution in all specfiles. That copyright
attribution should include all of the involved parties who authored
that specfile.

> Furthermore, you wouldn't even have to use the "Copyright SUSE GmbH" line.
> Several other packagers just put in their name, current year and everyone
> who adds something to it would add his own.

Exactly, and the openSUSE Project is _perfectly_ happy with that. We
encourage our contributors to share their copyright attributions when
there is more than one party that wants to be recognised as a
copyright holder on the work they have contributed to the openSUSE
Project.

> Also, I understand the principle of wanting one's work to be recognised,
> but is it worth the trouble for something that can be trivially reimplemented
> and it's MIT licensed so anyone could reuse it in the first place?

And as linked above, the MIT license already requires an explicit
copyright declaration in order to be MIT licensed. Without a copyright
declaration, a file claiming to be MIT licensed is breaching the terms
of it's own license, and therefore is not legally redistributable.

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey) (Walter Fey)

[Luigi Baldoni]

Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2017 at 12:23 AM
From: "Walter Fey" 
> 
> I agreed to this and informed him, that due to serious legal concerns,
> I cannot publish the copyright remark that is pointing to SUSE LINUX GmbH,
> Nuernberg, Germany without a  written approval from this company.

This is the part I understand the least.
What would be the legal ramifications or even just the risks in
attributing copyright to a third party? Or is mentioning a trademark that
concerns you?

Furthermore, you wouldn't even have to use the "Copyright SUSE GmbH" line.
Several other packagers just put in their name, current year and everyone
who adds something to it would add his own.

Also, I understand the principle of wanting one's work to be recognised,
but is it worth the trouble for something that can be trivially reimplemented
and it's MIT licensed so anyone could reuse it in the first place?

Regards

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On Thu 3. Aug 2017 at 02:01, Pascal Bleser 
wrote:

> 2017-08-01 18:02 GMT+02:00 Richard Brown :
> > On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 15:33, Luigi Baldoni  wrote:
> [...]
> >> If so I suspect it's related to the missing header with copyright
> >> attribution to SUSE AG.
> >>
> >> Now, the question is: would Packman be ok with that?
> >
> > I would hope the answer is "no"
>
> It seems to me that the conflict here comes from a different
> interpretation of how things happened.
> I might be wrong but from what I've read, I'm under the impression that
> - Walter says that he has maintained those spec files since years and,
> hence, he is the copyright holder on the spec files, and in that case,
> there would be no problem building and hosting them at Packman (*)
> - Richard says that he took bits of spec files that were not his
> copyright and/or had the copyright attribution to SUSE, and removed
> those in the process
> Maybe Walter means that he solely wants to base his packages in
> Packman on his very own spec files.
>
> (*) that being said...
> I'm in no position to influence anything as I've pretty much retired
> from everything, but as probably everyone knows, I have maintained a
> lot of packages at Packman in the past, for quite a while.
> Based on that experience, my personal opinion is that hamradio
> packages have absolutely nothing to do on Packman.
> MPlayer yes, hamradio? no. That is really not the purpose of Packman.
> It's not a dissidence from the openSUSE project (even though it was a
> bit of that in the olden days, before the openSUSE project started
> :)), it's a complementary (and important) service to its community.
>
> Is there maybe a way to resolve what seems to be a misunderstanding
> (or misrepresentation of events), and keep those packages on the
> openSUSE OBS ? (even though the tone of discourse makes it seem as if
> it's already too late for that..)


Walter is totally free to host whatever he wants on OBS as long as he
complies with the documented rules, which require copyright headers. He has
received extensive guidance that clarifies that, for those specfiles 100%
of his own work, he could/should assert his own copyright in that header.
For those where the specfiles contains lines taken from the collaboration
with hardware/sdr, the copyright header should include attribution to the
copyright holder of the hardware/sdr specfiles.

At no point was Walter banned, forbidden, or otherwise censored from OBS,
but we try to make it very clear what the acceptable behaviour is in
regards to software licenses and copyright.

The fact that he seems to want to move his work to Packman therefore
concerns me that he intends to do so in a way that OBS would deem
unacceptable. I consider this as much of a risk to Packman as it was to
OBS, and think it's important to highlight the problems associated with
that. I did not intend to come off as "threatening" and wish to apologise
for that - I thought my choice of language made it clear that I respect
Packmans independence as a project, but at the same time I feel the
responsible thing is to show the legal risks involved.


> > If Packman receives packages which clearly remove the legal copyright
> > attribution of previous authors, Packman would need to be prepared for
> > serious conversations with the copyright holder who's attributions are
> > being removed.
> > This is a very serious situation which fundamentally undermines the legal
> > basis under which free and open source licenses operate, so is taken very
> > seriously by corporations that run their business in compliance with
> those
> > licenses.
>
> Richard, seriously, those gratuitous threats...
> Nothing happened, why are you throwing those around ? (including the
> bit in a latter post you made..)


Nothing happened with Packman, but they did in OBS. It was a long drawn out
discussion with Walter that took a lot of the Boards time and SUSEs legals
team time. As I already said above, I didn't intend for what I wrote to be
read as a threat, but it most certainly was intended as a warning, because
I wouldn't wish on any other human being a repeat of the work I've already
gone through on this issue.


>
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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Pascal Bleser]

2017-08-02 10:08 GMT+02:00  :
[...]
> As Richard explained, this might be a bit dangerous adventure for
> packman.

I think we got the threatening message at this point.

> Apart from that I would say that motivation for moving to
> packman is a bit weak

+1

> my understanding is that move is motivated by hurt feelings after
> discussion about copyright attribution with OP, and
> by his opposition against including hamradio/sdr stuff in Factory and
> Leap.

Yes, clearly, there is no other reason to have those packages at
Packman rather than OBS.

> This would basically go against most of recent efforts to move
> everything that is possible/allowed to OBS/Leap/Factory and would put

+1

> additional load on packman's resources, which are much more scarce than
> those of OBS.

+1

Couldn't agree more.

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Pascal Bleser]

2017-08-01 18:02 GMT+02:00 Richard Brown :
> On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 15:33, Luigi Baldoni  wrote:
[...]
>> If so I suspect it's related to the missing header with copyright
>> attribution to SUSE AG.
>>
>> Now, the question is: would Packman be ok with that?
>
> I would hope the answer is "no"

It seems to me that the conflict here comes from a different
interpretation of how things happened.
I might be wrong but from what I've read, I'm under the impression that
- Walter says that he has maintained those spec files since years and,
hence, he is the copyright holder on the spec files, and in that case,
there would be no problem building and hosting them at Packman (*)
- Richard says that he took bits of spec files that were not his
copyright and/or had the copyright attribution to SUSE, and removed
those in the process
Maybe Walter means that he solely wants to base his packages in
Packman on his very own spec files.

(*) that being said...
I'm in no position to influence anything as I've pretty much retired
from everything, but as probably everyone knows, I have maintained a
lot of packages at Packman in the past, for quite a while.
Based on that experience, my personal opinion is that hamradio
packages have absolutely nothing to do on Packman.
MPlayer yes, hamradio? no. That is really not the purpose of Packman.
It's not a dissidence from the openSUSE project (even though it was a
bit of that in the olden days, before the openSUSE project started
:)), it's a complementary (and important) service to its community.

Is there maybe a way to resolve what seems to be a misunderstanding
(or misrepresentation of events), and keep those packages on the
openSUSE OBS ? (even though the tone of discourse makes it seem as if
it's already too late for that..)

> If Packman receives packages which clearly remove the legal copyright
> attribution of previous authors, Packman would need to be prepared for
> serious conversations with the copyright holder who's attributions are
> being removed.
> This is a very serious situation which fundamentally undermines the legal
> basis under which free and open source licenses operate, so is taken very
> seriously by corporations that run their business in compliance with those
> licenses.

Richard, seriously, those gratuitous threats...
Nothing happened, why are you throwing those around ? (including the
bit in a latter post you made..)

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey) (Walter Fey)

[Walter Fey]

Hallo,

I think I have to explain the whole situation from my point of few more 
detailed that I planned to do.


Most of the packages I like to submit to Packman were maintained at the 
hamradio project at the openSUSE build service to offer actual packages 
of hamradio related programs to hamradio operators.


During the last years (more than 5) all this work was done only by me. 
All of the spec files did not have any copyright remark, since this is 
not essential for their functionality.


Starting last Winter I noticed that a lot of this packages were copied 
to a different project (hardware/sdr). Actually I did not care about it. 
In April I received an email from one of the maintainers of 
openSUSE/hardware/sdr with the idea to start a cooperation between these 
two projects. We agreed that all SDR (Software defined Radio) packages 
should be maintained  in hardware/sdr and all other, more hamradio 
related packages, should stay in the hamradio project. For the packages 
with overlapping interests, we agreed package for package where it 
should be maintained in future.


So we decided to maintain the packages hamlib, fldigi and flxmrpc in 
hamradio and all other copied packages (a long list) in hardware/sdr. If 
one package, that is now maintained in the other project, is also needed 
for building we would just make a link. My contact person asked me to 
look into the changes that were made in the versions at hardware/sdr and 
take over all improvements. I agreed to this and informed him, that due 
to serious legal concerns, I cannot publish the copyright remark that is 
pointing to SUSE LINUX GmbH, Nuernberg, Germany without a  written 
approval from this company. So we decided to substitute this with a 
different copyright remark which is sufficient to submit this packages 
to factory.


Some changes to the package hamlib were breaking the build or 
functionality of other packages. So I used only some new descriptions I 
found in the spec file at  hardware/sdr and the introduction of 2 sub 
packages. The rest of the file was still the old one that was written by 
me during the last years. I published this version in hamradio and 
expected that the package hamlib and the others would be removed from 
hardware/sdr.


That did not happen. After about 2 weeks I received an email from a 
second maintainer of hardware/sdr complaining about  copying parts of 
their spec file without the copyright remark. I informed him about the 
agreement, asked him to talk to the first maintainer and tell me about 
there unique decision how to continue with the cooperation. In the same 
email I offered to stop all and step back to my old version. Since I did 
not get any answer to my mail I made the step back after about one week. 
All packages do not carry any trace anymore from the hardware/sdr 
versions. However the hardware/sdr versions still have a lot of words 
that were written by me in the past.


The next event in this sad story was that I received a very unpolite 
email from Richard Brown blaming me for the things that happened before, 
especially for not using the copyright remark to SUSE LINUX GmbH, 
Nuernberg, Germany. I informed him about the cooperation agreement and 
that meanwhile I removed all changes I copied from hardware/sdr. He did 
not answer any word about the circumstances that led to this situation 
and also did not say anything about the fact that all was removed. In 
his second email he still only continued to blame me for this.


That was the moment when I decided to stop contributing to openSUSE, 
especially hamradio.


It is just not the truth, when Richard Brown is writing that I intend to 
publish packages with removed legal copyright attributions at Packman.


All packages I like to submit to Packman are based on the versions that 
I maintained in openSUSE hamradio before the short try of cooperation 
and do not miss any copyright remark of previous authors who contributed 
to this packages. 2 packages never before left my home project and the 
spec files were written by me from the first scratch.


Regards, Walter Fey - DL8FCL(My ham radio callsign)



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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On Wed 2. Aug 2017 at 09:26, Luigi Baldoni  wrote:

> Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 at 10:08 AM
> From: mar...@pluskal.org
> >
> > On Tue, 2017-08-01 at 21:41 +0200, Luigi Baldoni wrote:
> > > No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file
> > > itself, with which I seem to recall
> > > from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
> > >
> > > Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to
> > > distribute anything where the IP is not
> > > clearly defined, even for a mere script.
> > >
> > > Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
> >
> > As Richard explained, this might be a bit dangerous adventure for
> > packman. Apart from that I would say that motivation for moving to
> > packman is a bit weak - my understanding is that move is motivated by
> > hurt feelings after discussion about copyright attribution with OP, and
> > by his opposition against including hamradio/sdr stuff in Factory and
> > Leap.
>
> Before slandering anyone, now I see that packages in home:dl8fcl:hamradio
> have the following header:
>
> #
> # spec file for package foo
> #
> # Copyright (c) 2017 Walter Fey DL8FCL
> #
> # This file is under MIT license
>
> Is this the reeason why OBS doesn't want it? Would packman?
> Can Walter Fey confirm this?


The packages in OBS which the openSUSE Board objected to either

1) had no copyright attribution at all
Or
2) had copyright attribution which removed that claimed by other
contributors in versions of the specfile used by the package.

Your above example clearly would not be a repeat of scenario 1), but I
cannot comment to whether scenario 2) applies without a thorough audit of
the code and commit history involved.

I personally would consider 2) more concerning than 1) as 1) is a state
that all source files go through as they are being originally created. 2)
directly undermines the removed copyright holders ability to enforce the
license of their contributions. This is deeply concerning and toxic to the
smooth and legal operation of any open source project, especially one
distributing software.

If the package had no history (this is clearly not the case in this
situation, as Walter has already stated they're packages he formerly hosted
on OBS) then the above header certainly seems consistent with good
practice. But in this case the history of the package and the attribution
of all of the copyright holders involved in that history is the most
important factor to consider.


>
> > This would basically go against most of recent efforts to move
> > everything that is possible/allowed to OBS/Leap/Factory and would put
> > additional load on packman's resources, which are much more scarce than
> > those of OBS.
>
> And on that I fully agree. It seems to me trying to find a modus vivendi
> with OBS would be a much fruitful employment of everyone's time:)
>
> Regards
>
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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Luigi Baldoni]

Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 at 10:28 AM
From: "Martin Pluskal" 
> > Before slandering anyone, now I see that packages in
> > home:dl8fcl:hamradio
> > have the following header:
> > 
> > #
> > # spec file for package foo
> > #
> > # Copyright (c) 2017 Walter Fey DL8FCL
> > #
> > # This file is under MIT license
> > 
> > Is this the reeason why OBS doesn't want it? Would packman?
> This state is afaik absolutely OK for OBS/openSUSE distribution.

If that's the thing, then it can stay on OBS, can't it?

But if Walter really wants to maintain full control he could
build everything in his home project, and then set up some personal
website to point at it.

Or, even better, set up his own OBS server, self-sign and mirror
rpms somewhere.

(clearly the latter would be more work)

Regards

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Martin Pluskal]

On Wed, 2017-08-02 at 10:25 +0200, Luigi Baldoni wrote:
> Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 at 10:08 AM
> From: mar...@pluskal.org
> > 
> > On Tue, 2017-08-01 at 21:41 +0200, Luigi Baldoni wrote:
> > > No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec
> > > file
> > > itself, with which I seem to recall
> > > from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
> > > 
> > > Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to
> > > distribute anything where the IP is not
> > > clearly defined, even for a mere script.
> > > 
> > > Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
> > 
> > As Richard explained, this might be a bit dangerous adventure for
> > packman. Apart from that I would say that motivation for moving to
> > packman is a bit weak - my understanding is that move is motivated
> > by
> > hurt feelings after discussion about copyright attribution with OP,
> > and
> > by his opposition against including hamradio/sdr stuff in Factory
> > and
> > Leap.
> 
> Before slandering anyone, now I see that packages in
> home:dl8fcl:hamradio
> have the following header:
> 
> #
> # spec file for package foo
> #
> # Copyright (c) 2017 Walter Fey DL8FCL
> #
> # This file is under MIT license
> 
> Is this the reeason why OBS doesn't want it? Would packman?
This state is afaik absolutely OK for OBS/openSUSE distribution.

Cheers

Martin

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Luigi Baldoni]

Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 at 10:08 AM
From: mar...@pluskal.org
>
> On Tue, 2017-08-01 at 21:41 +0200, Luigi Baldoni wrote:
> > No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file
> > itself, with which I seem to recall
> > from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
> > 
> > Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to
> > distribute anything where the IP is not
> > clearly defined, even for a mere script.
> > 
> > Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
> 
> As Richard explained, this might be a bit dangerous adventure for
> packman. Apart from that I would say that motivation for moving to
> packman is a bit weak - my understanding is that move is motivated by
> hurt feelings after discussion about copyright attribution with OP, and
> by his opposition against including hamradio/sdr stuff in Factory and
> Leap.

Before slandering anyone, now I see that packages in home:dl8fcl:hamradio
have the following header:

#
# spec file for package foo
#
# Copyright (c) 2017 Walter Fey DL8FCL
#
# This file is under MIT license

Is this the reeason why OBS doesn't want it? Would packman?
Can Walter Fey confirm this?

> This would basically go against most of recent efforts to move
> everything that is possible/allowed to OBS/Leap/Factory and would put
> additional load on packman's resources, which are much more scarce than
> those of OBS.

And on that I fully agree. It seems to me trying to find a modus vivendi
with OBS would be a much fruitful employment of everyone's time:)

Regards

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[martin]

On Tue, 2017-08-01 at 21:41 +0200, Luigi Baldoni wrote:
> Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 6:02 PM
> From: "Richard Brown" 
> > > > You mean the spec file, changes file etc when you refer to
> > > > 'form'?
> > > 
> > > If so I suspect it's related to the missing header with copyright
> > > attribution
> > > to SUSE AG.
> > > 
> > > Now, the question is: would Packman be ok with that?
> > 
> > I would hope the answer is "no"
> > 
> > If Packman receives packages which clearly remove the legal
> > copyright attribution of previous authors, Packman would
> > need to be prepared for serious conversations with the copyright
> > holder who's attributions are being removed.
> > 
> > This is a very serious situation which fundamentally undermines the
> > legal basis under which free and open source
> > licenses operate, so is taken very seriously by corporations that
> > run their business in compliance with those
> > licenses.
> 
>  
> No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file
> itself, with which I seem to recall
> from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
> 
> Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to
> distribute anything where the IP is not
> clearly defined, even for a mere script.
> 
> Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
> 
> Regard
Hi

As Richard explained, this might be a bit dangerous adventure for
packman. Apart from that I would say that motivation for moving to
packman is a bit weak - my understanding is that move is motivated by
hurt feelings after discussion about copyright attribution with OP, and
by his opposition against including hamradio/sdr stuff in Factory and
Leap.

This would basically go against most of recent efforts to move
everything that is possible/allowed to OBS/Leap/Factory and would put
additional load on packman's resources, which are much more scarce than
those of OBS.

Cheers

Martin

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 22:29, Luigi Baldoni  wrote:

> Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 10:30 PM
> From: "Richard Brown" 
> > > On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 20:42, Luigi Baldoni  aloi...@gmx.com]> wrote:Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 6:02 PM
> > >
> > > No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file
> itself, with which I seem to recall
> > > from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
> > >
> > > Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to
> distribute anything where the IP is not
> > > clearly defined, even for a mere script.
> > >
> > > Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
> >
> > I don't know if Packman would be lenient or not in the scenario you
> pose, but that isn't relevant to the actual risk with Mr. Feys proposed
> comtributions.
> >
> > The behaviour with Walter alludes to in his post was a clear,
> demonstrable case of Mr. Fey taking sources (in this case spec files) and
> reusing the spec file, in whole
> > or in part, while simultaneously removing the copyright header from
> those spec files.
> >
> > The spec files were all licensed under licenses such as the GPL and MIT
> which require all copyright attribution to be preserved as part of the
> license for reuse and
> > redistribution.
> >
> > Mr. Feys insistence to remove the copyright attribution while reusing
> source which clearly derived from clearly attributed specfiles is a clear
> breach of the licenses
> > involved and in the interest of the copyright holders, the upstream
> projects who chose the licenses in use, and all open source projects the
> openSUSE Board requested
> > Mr Fey cease that behaviour.
> >
> > Mr Fey now seems to seek to use Packman and his posts imply he might
> intend to do so in the same manner in which he chose to use the openSUSE
> Build service.
> >
> > If that is the case, this could be a serious issue for the Packman build
> service. If the sources involved include files derived from those
> copyrighted to SUSE Linux
> > GmbH it is likely that SUSE will notice (after all, I have read this
> thread) and it is certainly likely we will be compelled to take action to
> protect our copyright
> > and the redistribution license of the packages in question.
>
> > And that's a situation I really, sincerely hope we can avoid so hope
> that Packman has suitable processes and options in place to ensure the
> licenses and copyrights of
> > their contributions are as checked as they reasonably can be before
> hosting and redistributing the resulting binaries.
>
> I didn't say anything of the sort and I'm sorry if I gave that impression.


Nothing to apologise for, this is a polite conversation between curious
parties


>
> In my understanding (and I could be wrong), Walter Fey opposes copyright
> headers for spec files even
> when he's the original author.


Such an approach is inconsistent with the openSUSE Project where we clearly
state all spec files must have a license header including a copyright
attribution

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Specfile_guidelines#Specfile_Licensing

We do not require copyright attribution transfer and fully support our
contributors to assert their own copyright if they are the sole author, or
share attribution with multiple parties if the specfile includes the work
of multiple parties.

In the case of the openSUSE Project we consider all of our specifies to
have the same license as the associated source, unless it is not an open
source license in which case the specfile is MIT.

As all major open source licenses require clear copyright attribution to be
valid, any removal of copyright attribution when reusing openSUSE specfiles
is a breach of the license in question.

This is a common practice that is followed throughout the open source
world, for example the FSF have the following guides even on the topic.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

So this is not just a question of corporate concern, but the correct, and
secure, way to ensure that the terms and conditions are enforceable for the
software author as intended under their chosen license.

If Packman plays too fast and loose with such good practice I can imagine
some very uncomfortable possibilities.

Given most open source licenses have strict rules regarding redistribution,
I cannot imagine it is a good thing for any service hosting open source
software to turn a blind eye to the terms, conditions and copyrights of the
software they are distributing.

Just my 2c and sharing from my own personal experience


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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Luigi Baldoni]

Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 10:30 PM
From: "Richard Brown" 
> > On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 20:42, Luigi Baldoni 
> >  wrote:Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 
> > 2017 at 6:02 PM
> > 
> > No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file itself, 
> > with which I seem to recall
> > from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
> >
> > Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to distribute 
> > anything where the IP is not
> > clearly defined, even for a mere script.
> > 
> > Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
> 
> I don't know if Packman would be lenient or not in the scenario you pose, but 
> that isn't relevant to the actual risk with Mr. Feys proposed comtributions.
> 
> The behaviour with Walter alludes to in his post was a clear, demonstrable 
> case of Mr. Fey taking sources (in this case spec files) and reusing the spec 
> file, in whole
> or in part, while simultaneously removing the copyright header from those 
> spec files.
>  
> The spec files were all licensed under licenses such as the GPL and MIT which 
> require all copyright attribution to be preserved as part of the license for 
> reuse and
> redistribution.
>  
> Mr. Feys insistence to remove the copyright attribution while reusing source 
> which clearly derived from clearly attributed specfiles is a clear breach of 
> the licenses
> involved and in the interest of the copyright holders, the upstream projects 
> who chose the licenses in use, and all open source projects the openSUSE 
> Board requested 
> Mr Fey cease that behaviour.
> 
> Mr Fey now seems to seek to use Packman and his posts imply he might intend 
> to do so in the same manner in which he chose to use the openSUSE Build 
> service.
>  
> If that is the case, this could be a serious issue for the Packman build 
> service. If the sources involved include files derived from those copyrighted 
> to SUSE Linux 
> GmbH it is likely that SUSE will notice (after all, I have read this thread) 
> and it is certainly likely we will be compelled to take action to protect our 
> copyright 
> and the redistribution license of the packages in question.
 
> And that's a situation I really, sincerely hope we can avoid so hope that 
> Packman has suitable processes and options in place to ensure the licenses 
> and copyrights of
> their contributions are as checked as they reasonably can be before hosting 
> and redistributing the resulting binaries.

I didn't say anything of the sort and I'm sorry if I gave that impression.

In my understanding (and I could be wrong), Walter Fey opposes copyright 
headers for spec files even
when he's the original author.

Hence my perplexity.

Now, I don't know if you know more about whatever happened on OBS or if the 
specfile skeleton itself is subject
to copyright, but it would be useful to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

Regards

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 20:42, Luigi Baldoni  wrote:

> Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 6:02 PM
> From: "Richard Brown" 
> > I would hope the answer is "no"
> >
> > If Packman receives packages which clearly remove the legal copyright
> attribution of previous authors, Packman would
> > need to be prepared for serious conversations with the copyright holder
> who's attributions are being removed.
> >
> > This is a very serious situation which fundamentally undermines the
> legal basis under which free and open source
> > licenses operate, so is taken very seriously by corporations that run
> their business in compliance with those
> > licenses.
>
> No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file itself,
> with which I seem to recall
> from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
>
> Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to
> distribute anything where the IP is not
> clearly defined, even for a mere script.
>
> Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
>
> Regard
>
>
I don't know if Packman would be lenient or not in the scenario you pose,
but that isn't relevant to the actual risk with Mr. Feys proposed
comtributions.

The behaviour with Walter alludes to in his post was a clear, demonstrable
case of Mr. Fey taking sources (in this case spec files) and reusing the
spec file, in whole or in part, while simultaneously removing the copyright
header from those spec files.

The spec files were all licensed under licenses such as the GPL and MIT
which require all copyright attribution to be preserved as part of the
license for reuse and redistribution.

Mr. Feys insistence to remove the copyright attribution while reusing
source which clearly derived from clearly attributed specfiles is a clear
breach of the licenses involved and in the interest of the copyright
holders, the upstream projects who chose the licenses in use, and all open
source projects the openSUSE Board requested Mr Fey cease that behaviour.

Mr Fey now seems to seek to use Packman and his posts imply he might intend
to do so in the same manner in which he chose to use the openSUSE Build
service.

If that is the case, this could be a serious issue for the Packman build
service. If the sources involved include files derived from those
copyrighted to SUSE Linux GmbH it is likely that SUSE will notice (after
all, I have read this thread) and it is certainly likely we will be
compelled to take action to protect our copyright and the redistribution
license of the packages in question.

And that's a situation I really, sincerely hope we can avoid so hope that
Packman has suitable processes and options in place to ensure the licenses
and copyrights of their contributions are as checked as they reasonably can
be before hosting and redistributing the resulting binaries.

Regards,

- R

>
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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Luigi Baldoni]

Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 6:02 PM
From: "Richard Brown" 
> > > You mean the spec file, changes file etc when you refer to 'form'?
> >
> > If so I suspect it's related to the missing header with copyright 
> > attribution
> > to SUSE AG.
> >
> > Now, the question is: would Packman be ok with that?
>
> I would hope the answer is "no"
>
> If Packman receives packages which clearly remove the legal copyright 
> attribution of previous authors, Packman would
> need to be prepared for serious conversations with the copyright holder who's 
> attributions are being removed.
>
> This is a very serious situation which fundamentally undermines the legal 
> basis under which free and open source
> licenses operate, so is taken very seriously by corporations that run their 
> business in compliance with those
> licenses.
 
No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file itself, with 
which I seem to recall
from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.

Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to distribute 
anything where the IP is not
clearly defined, even for a mere script.

Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?

Regard


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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 15:33, Luigi Baldoni  wrote:

> Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 2:22 PM
> From: Malcolm 
> >
> > >A few weeks ago I was informed by somebody, who is member of the
> > >openSUSE Board and employee of the SUSE GmbH, that the form as this
> > >was done for more than ten years is not welcome anymore.
> > 
> > Hi
> > You mean the spec file, changes file etc when you refer to 'form'?
>
> If so I suspect it's related to the missing header with copyright
> attribution
> to SUSE AG.
>
> Now, the question is: would Packman be ok with that?


I would hope the answer is "no"

If Packman receives packages which clearly remove the legal copyright
attribution of previous authors, Packman would need to be prepared for
serious conversations with the copyright holder who's attributions are
being removed.

This is a very serious situation which fundamentally undermines the legal
basis under which free and open source licenses operate, so is taken very
seriously by corporations that run their business in compliance with those
licenses.

Regards,
Richard Brown
openSUSE Chairman
SUSE Linux GmbH


>
> Regards
>
>
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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Luigi Baldoni]

Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 2:22 PM
From: Malcolm 
>
> >A few weeks ago I was informed by somebody, who is member of the 
> >openSUSE Board and employee of the SUSE GmbH, that the form as this
> >was done for more than ten years is not welcome anymore.
> 
> Hi
> You mean the spec file, changes file etc when you refer to 'form'?

If so I suspect it's related to the missing header with copyright attribution
to SUSE AG.

Now, the question is: would Packman be ok with that?

Regards
 

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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Malcolm]

On Tue 01 Aug 2017 01:31:05 PM CDT, Walter Fey wrote:

>>  
> From the very beginning SUSE LINUX contained a lot of hamradio
> related 
>packages. In 2005 these hamradio packages were dropped from the
>official distribution. A few hamradio operators and LINUX enthusiasts
>took this packages and started the hamradio project at openSUSE. Most
>of the packages that are available today in hamradio were started
>after this. I joined this group in 2008. Meanwhile all of the initial
>maintainers are no longer active and most of the improvements, updates
>and new packages during the last years were done by me.
>A few weeks ago I was informed by somebody, who is member of the 
>openSUSE Board and employee of the SUSE GmbH, that the form as this
>was done for more than ten years is not welcome anymore.

Hi
You mean the spec file, changes file etc when you refer to 'form'?

Nothing stopping you copying the whole hamradio development project to
your home on OBS and publishing from there.

-- 
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.2 | GNOME 3.20.2 | 4.4.74-18.20-default
HP 255 G4 Notebook | A6-6310 X4 @ 1.80 GHz | AMD Radeon R4
up 15 days 11:59, 1 user, load average: 0.19, 0.57, 0.60



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Re: [packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Walter Fey]

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 19:35:34 +0200
From: Hans-Peter Jansen
To:packman@links2linux.de
Subject: Re: [packman] New packages for packman
Message-ID: <5199470.tWIjIzyoY5@xrated>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Montag, 31. Juli 2017 15:31:03 Walter Fey wrote:

Dear Packman Team

Thank you for the access to PMBS.

I added some hamradio related packages which are not available in the
official openSUSE distributions to my home project/subproject
"home:dl8fcl:hamradio". One package "gpredict" is available in Leap 42.3
as an old version. It is a fork of the package I was maintaining for a
long time. All these and more packages were maintained and updated by me
at the openSUSE Build Service, project hamradio.

Meanwhile I do not update this openSUSE project any longer and like to
submit these packages to a project in PMBS from were they could be
published.

Mind elaborating on your reasons on this move?

Please check my answer to Luigi Baldonis mail further down in the text.

Cheers,
Pete


--

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 19:54:48 +0200
From: "Luigi Baldoni"
To:packman@links2linux.de
Subject: Re: [packman] New packages for packman
Message-ID:



Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 at 3:31 PM
From: "Walter Fey"

I added some hamradio related packages which are not available in the
official openSUSE distributions to my home project/subproject
"home:dl8fcl:hamradio". One package "gpredict" is available in Leap 42.3
as an old version. It is a fork of the package I was maintaining for a
long time. All these and more packages were maintained and updated by me
at the openSUSE Build Service, project hamradio.

I thought packman was, for the most part, reserved to packages that (chiefly
for legal reasons) couldn't be hosted on OBS.

The Packman Homepage says:
"What is the Packman team doing ?
We build software packages to enable users to easily install and remove 
software on Linux.
More specifically, we do so for software that is not shipped as part of 
distributions or that are

shipped as an outdated version."
I think these packages meet this.

May we ask what's wrong
with the hamradio project?

From the very beginning SUSE LINUX contained a lot of hamradio related 
packages. In 2005 these hamradio packages were dropped from the official 
distribution. A few hamradio operators and LINUX enthusiasts took this 
packages and started the hamradio project at openSUSE. Most of the 
packages that are available today in hamradio were started after this. I 
joined this group in 2008. Meanwhile all of the initial maintainers are 
no longer active and most of the improvements, updates and new packages 
during the last years were done by me.
A few weeks ago I was informed by somebody, who is member of the 
openSUSE Board and employee of the SUSE GmbH, that the form as this was 
done for more than ten years is not welcome anymore.



Meanwhile I do not update this openSUSE project any longer and like to
submit these packages to a project in PMBS from were they could be
published.
I do not intend to move all packages to PMBS, only the ones which I 
think are most interesting. One package,  r2t2gui, had not published in 
openSUSE hamradio before. I developed and test it during the last weeks 
in my home project.

They could be published, but they would also need to be maintained as much
as on OBS.
I mean, I get the part about not having time anymore, but what's the
difference compared to where they are now?
A nice side effect of this change can be, that the Packman repository is 
well known and the packages can be found easier by people who are 
looking for hamradio programs.
It would be pleasure for me to continue updating and maintaining these 
packages, now in the PMBS.


Best regards, Walter DL8FCL


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