Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Vitaly Kushneriuk <vitaly_kushneriuk@yahoo.com>]

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 18:12, Chris Houser wrote:
> Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:              [Sun Feb  3 2002, 12:37:17AM EST]         
> > An yes, you can leave the copyright to yourself. 
> 
> Acutally, I believe that we want all ebuilds in the official
> /usr/portage to be GPL and Copyright by Gentoo Inc.  GPL protects the
> ebuild authors from Gentoo having too much control over their work, but
> the Gentoo Copyright gives us some flexibility in handling the hundreds
> of files from different authors.
> 
> Do I have this wrong?
Yes. you do have this wrong ;)
First of all, once contributions are GPL-ed , the fact that you do not
own the copyright does not prevent you from distributing/modifying etc.
So having all copyright go to Gentoo Inc. will not make your life easier
if you want to continue the open-souce path.

Second, you _can_not_ *require* contributors to give up their copyright.
People can actualy get concerned about the Gentoo feature and intentions
if you do. _If_ Gentoo Inc. will have all the copyrights, then _nothing_
will prevent it one day changing the license for all _future_ versions.
The fact that no single entity/person has all the copyright is
a Good Thing (tm).

	/Vitaly