* [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS @ 2004-10-07 20:59 Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-07 22:02 ` Ciaran McCreesh ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Donnie Berkholz @ 2004-10-07 20:59 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev I'd like to clarify our policy on what goes into Gentoo CVS. Right now, we sort of have the old copyright stuff that says only Gentoo-owned things in Gentoo CVS. But we've admitted it sucks and we're reworking it. We need an exception for source patches. I've got something like 75 patches to X right now, and maintaining them on my own computer or some other version control system is silly. That's what Gentoo CVS should be for -- maintaining parts of Gentoo. Most packages in Gentoo aren't owned by Gentoo, and patches to those packages shouldn't be an exception to that. Ownership should remain either with the author of the patch or the package maintainer, not with Gentoo. We have no business sticking our heads in there unless the patch author specifically requests to turn ownership over to Gentoo. This is problematic in two cases: (1) patches owned by people other than the maintainer, and (2) patches owned by the maintainer. In the first case, a dev would just be breaking the rules by adding those patches to CVS -- copyright doesn't change just because we say it does. In the second case, many devs signed an agreement already saying anything they wrote and added to Gentoo CVS is Gentoo's. This needs to change for patches. There should be no discrimination against a patch author -- whether Gentoo dev or not Gentoo dev, no copyright assignment should happen. If everyone agrees to this, we can start adding these to gentoo/src/ or whatever other location makes sense. I'd guess at least X and kernel people would be interested -- maybe others with large patchsets, such as toolchain. Making Gentoo maintainers keep their patches outside of Gentoo because of an annoying technicality is simply ludicrous. It doesn't benefit developers or users. Thanks, Donnie -- Donnie Berkholz Gentoo Linux -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-07 20:59 [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS Donnie Berkholz @ 2004-10-07 22:02 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-08 11:47 ` Chris Bainbridge 2004-10-30 2:50 ` Aron Griffis 2 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Ciaran McCreesh @ 2004-10-07 22:02 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 633 bytes --] On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 13:59:47 -0700 Donnie Berkholz <spyderous@gentoo.org> wrote: | If everyone agrees to this, we can start adding these to gentoo/src/ | or whatever other location makes sense. I'd guess at least X and | kernel people would be interested -- maybe others with large | patchsets, such as toolchain. You could do what various other people are doing and move it to bkbits / berlios / wherever and as an added bonus get to use a decent version control system :) -- Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Sparc, MIPS, Vim, Fluxbox) Mail : ciaranm at gentoo.org Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-07 20:59 [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-07 22:02 ` Ciaran McCreesh @ 2004-10-08 11:47 ` Chris Bainbridge 2004-10-08 14:04 ` Jon Portnoy ` (2 more replies) 2004-10-30 2:50 ` Aron Griffis 2 siblings, 3 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Chris Bainbridge @ 2004-10-08 11:47 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev On Thursday 07 October 2004 21:59, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > In the > second case, many devs signed an agreement already saying anything they > wrote and added to Gentoo CVS is Gentoo's. This always seemed like an odd policy to me. Linus doesn't require contributions to the kernel to have copyright assigned to him, and I don't see why we need to. In fact, it works against our ability to enforce copyrights. Suppose that some UK company starts breaking the copyright of gentoo in some way, despite the fact that I have written ebuilds etc. I now have no way of taking legal action against them, as I no longer have any legal control over my contributions. Instead of having a large globally distributed group of people each capable of taking legal action against infringers, we now have one NFP legal entity that afaik exists (legally) only in 1 US state. -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 11:47 ` Chris Bainbridge @ 2004-10-08 14:04 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-08 15:27 ` Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-08 17:20 ` Chris Bainbridge 2004-10-08 14:23 ` Mike Frysinger 2004-10-10 9:38 ` [gentoo-dev] " Paul de Vrieze 2 siblings, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Jon Portnoy @ 2004-10-08 14:04 UTC (permalink / raw To: Chris Bainbridge; +Cc: gentoo-dev On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 12:47:09PM +0100, Chris Bainbridge wrote: > On Thursday 07 October 2004 21:59, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > > In the > > second case, many devs signed an agreement already saying anything they > > wrote and added to Gentoo CVS is Gentoo's. > > This always seemed like an odd policy to me. Linus doesn't require > contributions to the kernel to have copyright assigned to him, and I don't > see why we need to. In fact, it works against our ability to enforce > copyrights. Suppose that some UK company starts breaking the copyright of > gentoo in some way, despite the fact that I have written ebuilds etc. I now > have no way of taking legal action against them, as I no longer have any > legal control over my contributions. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright explains all of this. Assigning copyright to Gentoo is quite necessary and will not be changed. This has all been discussed to death back when it was implemented. -- Jon Portnoy avenj/irc.freenode.net -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 14:04 ` Jon Portnoy @ 2004-10-08 15:27 ` Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-08 15:33 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-08 15:42 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-08 17:20 ` Chris Bainbridge 1 sibling, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Donnie Berkholz @ 2004-10-08 15:27 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1245 bytes --] On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 07:04, Jon Portnoy wrote: > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright explains all of this. > > Assigning copyright to Gentoo is quite necessary and will not be > changed. This has all been discussed to death back when it was > implemented. The question still remains for patches. We can't assign other people's copyrights for them, so we (apparently) can't keep their patches in CVS, so there end up being a bunch of different repositories all over the place to maintain Gentoo packages. And if we're allowing non-Gentoo-owned patches to be in CVS, all copyrighted by other people, we should also allow Gentoo devs to retain copyright on their patches. What I want here is a way to maintain my patches in a way that allows shared development without having my own server. Since they're for Gentoo, it only makes sense to me that I should be able to maintain them using Gentoo CVS. Someone brought up the idea of arch yesterday. Maybe that's what I'll have to do, even though it sucks because it raises the barrier to get into X. It's tough enough to get recruits now. Making them learn two separate and very different VCS's will only make it worse. -- Donnie Berkholz Gentoo Linux [-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 15:27 ` Donnie Berkholz @ 2004-10-08 15:33 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-08 15:42 ` Jon Portnoy 1 sibling, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Ciaran McCreesh @ 2004-10-08 15:33 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 706 bytes --] On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 08:27:15 -0700 Donnie Berkholz <spyderous@gentoo.org> wrote: | Someone brought up the idea of arch yesterday. Maybe that's what I'll | have to do, even though it sucks because it raises the barrier to get | into X. It's tough enough to get recruits now. Making them learn two | separate and very different VCS's will only make it worse. If you want "easy to learn", svn and bitkeeper are both pretty similar to cvs operation-wise... arch is insanely nasty and does so many things differently. Plus it's full of hideous bugs :) -- Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Sparc, MIPS, Vim, Fluxbox) Mail : ciaranm at gentoo.org Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 15:27 ` Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-08 15:33 ` Ciaran McCreesh @ 2004-10-08 15:42 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-08 16:28 ` Greg KH 1 sibling, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread From: Jon Portnoy @ 2004-10-08 15:42 UTC (permalink / raw To: Donnie Berkholz; +Cc: gentoo-dev On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 08:27:15AM -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 07:04, Jon Portnoy wrote: > > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright explains all of this. > > > > Assigning copyright to Gentoo is quite necessary and will not be > > changed. This has all been discussed to death back when it was > > implemented. > > The question still remains for patches. We can't assign other people's > copyrights for them, so we (apparently) can't keep their patches in CVS, > so there end up being a bunch of different repositories all over the > place to maintain Gentoo packages. > Hmm. I thought when we discussed this previously the conclusion was that since we don't own copyright, we can't reassign copyright, and therefore it's a moot point and we can keep it in the tree anyway. > And if we're allowing non-Gentoo-owned patches to be in CVS, all > copyrighted by other people, we should also allow Gentoo devs to retain > copyright on their patches. I agree. IIRC the trustees were going to consult with a lawyer and hash out fresh copyright assignment terms; when that happens it should probably address the patch situation. > > What I want here is a way to maintain my patches in a way that allows > shared development without having my own server. Since they're for > Gentoo, it only makes sense to me that I should be able to maintain them > using Gentoo CVS. > > Someone brought up the idea of arch yesterday. Maybe that's what I'll > have to do, even though it sucks because it raises the barrier to get > into X. It's tough enough to get recruits now. Making them learn two > separate and very different VCS's will only make it worse. Yeah. -- Jon Portnoy avenj/irc.freenode.net -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 15:42 ` Jon Portnoy @ 2004-10-08 16:28 ` Greg KH 2004-10-08 16:36 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-10 9:37 ` Paul de Vrieze 0 siblings, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Greg KH @ 2004-10-08 16:28 UTC (permalink / raw To: Jon Portnoy; +Cc: Donnie Berkholz, gentoo-dev On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 11:42:11AM -0400, Jon Portnoy wrote: > On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 08:27:15AM -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > > On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 07:04, Jon Portnoy wrote: > > > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright explains all of this. > > > > > > Assigning copyright to Gentoo is quite necessary and will not be > > > changed. This has all been discussed to death back when it was > > > implemented. > > > > The question still remains for patches. We can't assign other people's > > copyrights for them, so we (apparently) can't keep their patches in CVS, > > so there end up being a bunch of different repositories all over the > > place to maintain Gentoo packages. > > > > Hmm. I thought when we discussed this previously the conclusion was that > since we don't own copyright, we can't reassign copyright, and therefore > it's a moot point and we can keep it in the tree anyway. No, the conclusion was that the patches can not be in the tree. That is why I ripped the 2.6 kernel patches out of the cvs tree, and moved them to an external bitkeeper tree. greg k-h -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 16:28 ` Greg KH @ 2004-10-08 16:36 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-10 9:37 ` Paul de Vrieze 1 sibling, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Jon Portnoy @ 2004-10-08 16:36 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 09:28:33AM -0700, Greg KH wrote: > > No, the conclusion was that the patches can not be in the tree. > I guess my memory just sucks. Are the trustees currently able to start discussions with a lawyer about a new copyright assignment agreement? -- Jon Portnoy avenj/irc.freenode.net -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 16:28 ` Greg KH 2004-10-08 16:36 ` Jon Portnoy @ 2004-10-10 9:37 ` Paul de Vrieze 2004-10-10 18:48 ` Anthony Gorecki ` (2 more replies) 1 sibling, 3 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Paul de Vrieze @ 2004-10-10 9:37 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 672 bytes --] On Friday 08 October 2004 18:28, Greg KH wrote: > > No, the conclusion was that the patches can not be in the tree. > > That is why I ripped the 2.6 kernel patches out of the cvs tree, and > moved them to an external bitkeeper tree. If that is true, it is all the more reason to change this. I don't know about the patches. I feel that it is our best interest if developer made patches are assigned to gentoo, but we could also do it by simple copyright assignment (e.g. putting a header on the patch which says Copyright Gentoo Foundation 200x) Paul -- Paul de Vrieze Gentoo Developer Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-10 9:37 ` Paul de Vrieze @ 2004-10-10 18:48 ` Anthony Gorecki 2004-10-10 20:36 ` Luke-Jr 2004-10-10 22:07 ` Daniel Drake 2 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Anthony Gorecki @ 2004-10-10 18:48 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 367 bytes --] On Sunday 10 October 2004 2:37 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: > we could also do it by simple copyright > assignment (e.g. putting a header on the patch which says Copyright Gentoo > Foundation 200x) I'm somewhat dubious as to whether that would have any legal standing as a copyright assignment, though IANAL. -- Anthony Gorecki Ectro-Linux Foundation [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 828 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-10 9:37 ` Paul de Vrieze 2004-10-10 18:48 ` Anthony Gorecki @ 2004-10-10 20:36 ` Luke-Jr 2004-10-10 20:47 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-11 10:47 ` Paul de Vrieze 2004-10-10 22:07 ` Daniel Drake 2 siblings, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Luke-Jr @ 2004-10-10 20:36 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 706 bytes --] On Sunday 10 October 2004 9:37 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: > I feel that it is our best interest if developer made patches are assigned > to gentoo, but we could also do it by simple copyright assignment (e.g. > putting a header on the patch which says Copyright Gentoo Foundation 200x) Doing this would prevent such patches from being submitted upstream to projects with just as absurd a policy (copyright assigned to only them). This kind of policy really prevents open source from being any better than proprietary software-- if both projects require exclusive ownership of the code, then either one or the other can use it, not both. -- Luke-Jr Developer, Utopios http://utopios.org/ [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-10 20:36 ` Luke-Jr @ 2004-10-10 20:47 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-10 21:16 ` Luke-Jr 2004-10-11 10:47 ` Paul de Vrieze 1 sibling, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread From: Ciaran McCreesh @ 2004-10-10 20:47 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1009 bytes --] On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 20:36:57 +0000 Luke-Jr <luke-jr@utopios.org> wrote: | On Sunday 10 October 2004 9:37 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: | > I feel that it is our best interest if developer made patches are | > assigned to gentoo, but we could also do it by simple copyright | > assignment (e.g. putting a header on the patch which says Copyright | > Gentoo Foundation 200x) | | Doing this would prevent such patches from being submitted upstream to | projects with just as absurd a policy (copyright assigned to only | them). This kind of policy really prevents open source from being any | better than proprietary software-- if both projects require exclusive | ownership of the code, then either one or the other can use it, not | both.-- No, it just means that the patches in question would have to go in mirror://gentoo/ rather than in ${FILESDIR}. -- Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Vim, Fluxbox, Sparc, Mips) Mail : ciaranm at gentoo.org Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-10 20:47 ` Ciaran McCreesh @ 2004-10-10 21:16 ` Luke-Jr 0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Luke-Jr @ 2004-10-10 21:16 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1206 bytes --] On Sunday 10 October 2004 8:47 pm, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: > On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 20:36:57 +0000 Luke-Jr <luke-jr@utopios.org> wrote: > | On Sunday 10 October 2004 9:37 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: > | > I feel that it is our best interest if developer made patches are > | > assigned to gentoo, but we could also do it by simple copyright > | > assignment (e.g. putting a header on the patch which says Copyright > | > Gentoo Foundation 200x) > | > | Doing this would prevent such patches from being submitted upstream to > | projects with just as absurd a policy (copyright assigned to only > | them). This kind of policy really prevents open source from being any > | better than proprietary software-- if both projects require exclusive > | ownership of the code, then either one or the other can use it, not > | both.-- > > No, it just means that the patches in question would have to go in > mirror://gentoo/ rather than in ${FILESDIR}. Assuming it is patches that is the issue. This would still be an issue if someone wanted to mix Portage code (some generic function, perhaps) with another program that has the same policy. -- Luke-Jr Developer, Utopios http://utopios.org/ [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-10 20:36 ` Luke-Jr 2004-10-10 20:47 ` Ciaran McCreesh @ 2004-10-11 10:47 ` Paul de Vrieze 1 sibling, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Paul de Vrieze @ 2004-10-11 10:47 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1382 bytes --] On Sunday 10 October 2004 22:36, Luke-Jr wrote: > On Sunday 10 October 2004 9:37 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: > > I feel that it is our best interest if developer made patches are > > assigned to gentoo, but we could also do it by simple copyright > > assignment (e.g. putting a header on the patch which says Copyright > > Gentoo Foundation 200x) > > Doing this would prevent such patches from being submitted upstream to > projects with just as absurd a policy (copyright assigned to only > them). This kind of policy really prevents open source from being any > better than proprietary software-- if both projects require exclusive > ownership of the code, then either one or the other can use it, not > both. What I meant is that developers (helped by a written statement) assign developer written/made patches to gentoo. Such patches would so contain a copyright statement. If the patches are from someone else there would be no statement and it is clear that the copyright is not with gentoo. The copyright statement would then make clear where the copyright lies. If developers want to defent their own copyright on a patch they will not put a "copyright Gentoo Foundation" header in the file but e.g. a "Copyright Paul de Vrieze" header. Paul -- Paul de Vrieze Gentoo Developer Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-10 9:37 ` Paul de Vrieze 2004-10-10 18:48 ` Anthony Gorecki 2004-10-10 20:36 ` Luke-Jr @ 2004-10-10 22:07 ` Daniel Drake 2 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Daniel Drake @ 2004-10-10 22:07 UTC (permalink / raw To: Paul de Vrieze; +Cc: gentoo-dev Paul de Vrieze wrote: > If that is true, it is all the more reason to change this. I don't know about > the patches. I feel that it is our best interest if developer made patches > are assigned to gentoo, but we could also do it by simple copyright > assignment (e.g. putting a header on the patch which says Copyright Gentoo > Foundation 200x) The patches under discussion here (gentoo kernel patches) are a different issue - most of these are not written by us, but they are taken from the prerelease kernels upstream. Thats why we had to take them out of our CVS, theres no way we could have claimed ownership or copyright on them, which was in conflict with the copyright assignment agreement. Daniel -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 14:04 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-08 15:27 ` Donnie Berkholz @ 2004-10-08 17:20 ` Chris Bainbridge 1 sibling, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Chris Bainbridge @ 2004-10-08 17:20 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev On Friday 08 October 2004 15:04, Jon Portnoy wrote: > On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 12:47:09PM +0100, Chris Bainbridge wrote: > > > > This always seemed like an odd policy to me. Linus doesn't require > > contributions to the kernel to have copyright assigned to him, and I > > don't see why we need to. In fact, it works against our ability to > > enforce copyrights. Suppose that some UK company starts breaking the > > copyright of gentoo in some way, despite the fact that I have written > > ebuilds etc. I now have no way of taking legal action against them, as I > > no longer have any legal control over my contributions. > > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright explains all of this. > > Assigning copyright to Gentoo is quite necessary and will not be > changed. This has all been discussed to death back when it was > implemented. Except the reasoning is based on the flawed premise: "This is a benefit because all owners of the code in question must be a party in any legal action." This isn't true. The netfilter team have been active in suing GPL violators of the linux kernel in Europe, which wouldn't have been possible under the current gentoo policy. -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 11:47 ` Chris Bainbridge 2004-10-08 14:04 ` Jon Portnoy @ 2004-10-08 14:23 ` Mike Frysinger 2004-10-08 16:21 ` Sven Vermeulen 2004-10-09 14:13 ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan 2004-10-10 9:38 ` [gentoo-dev] " Paul de Vrieze 2 siblings, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Mike Frysinger @ 2004-10-08 14:23 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev On Friday 08 October 2004 07:47 am, Chris Bainbridge wrote: > This always seemed like an odd policy to me. Linus doesn't require > contributions to the kernel to have copyright assigned to him, and I don't > see why we need to. the reiserfs peeps require any patch you send to them to be completely signed off ... you have to give them copyright/license/everything over any patch you send them > Instead of having a large globally distributed group of people each capable > of taking legal action against infringers, we now have one > NFP legal entity that afaik exists (legally) only in 1 US state. afaik there is work going on in germany which would allow for coverage in the EU (i think that the EU allows for this ...) -mike -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 14:23 ` Mike Frysinger @ 2004-10-08 16:21 ` Sven Vermeulen 2004-10-09 14:13 ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan 1 sibling, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Sven Vermeulen @ 2004-10-08 16:21 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 856 bytes --] On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 10:23:20AM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote: > > Instead of having a large globally distributed group of people each capable > > of taking legal action against infringers, we now have one > > NFP legal entity that afaik exists (legally) only in 1 US state. > > afaik there is work going on in germany which would allow for coverage in the > EU (i think that the EU allows for this ...) > -mike It exists everywhere but is seated in one US state. This applies for most US developers, you don't call those "illegal" in other states do you? :) Anyway, in Belgium the Gentoo Foundation is a valid entity to speak/work with/for, I'm pretty sure this is the same for every other country/county. Wkr, Sven Vermeulen -- Documentation & PR project leader The Gentoo Project <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>> [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [gentoo-dev] Re: non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 14:23 ` Mike Frysinger 2004-10-08 16:21 ` Sven Vermeulen @ 2004-10-09 14:13 ` Duncan 2004-10-09 17:33 ` Donnie Berkholz 1 sibling, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread From: Duncan @ 2004-10-09 14:13 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev Mike Frysinger posted <200410081023.20888.vapier@gentoo.org>, excerpted below, on Fri, 08 Oct 2004 10:23:20 -0400: > the reiserfs peeps require any patch you send to them to be completely > signed off ... you have to give them copyright/license/everything over any > patch you send them That's because they want the flexibility of being able to do private licenses as well. It's possible that they can't make public certain mods they may do for the US DOD for instance, and could easily be other "private" contracts. With their own code, they have that flexibility since they are the owner. With submitted patches, that isn't the case, unless they become the owner of those patches as well. Of course, most here probably know more about the Zynot fork history and allegations than I do. I did a bit of study into it, including reading the why fork and etc. docs on his site, and what struck me was how he kept alleging Gentoo (well, core and DRobbins) had a private for-profit hidden agenda, while at the /same/ time, he was busy taking advantage of the GPL licensing (and deliberate policy choice, I expect) of anything Gentoo to do his fork. It would have been pretty stupid, I thought, for that license to be chosen, if there /were/ such a hidden agenda, since it not only allowed forking as he was doing, but prevented taking things private if they /wanted/ to. Of course the last clause doesn't hold if Gentoo insists on transfer of copyright, as it could then be taken private. Not that I expect it will happen, but the insistence on rights assignment, not only GPL licensing for any code contributed, /does/ leave open both that possibility, and the question, for those wishing to make such allegations. There may be those who prefer GPL and for which that license forms much of their motivation. These sorts of folks take comfort in for instance the fact that it'd be practically impossible to change the Linux kernel code license. There are to many parts owned by to many people, and getting them all to agree would be essentially impossible, as would rewriting the parts from those who don't agree, because the code is so interwoven. When a single entity demands ownership of all code, that barrier to taking it private disappears. Of course, as with the SSH code which went private, it can then be forked, but some (including myself) prefer preventing the possibility of it ever going proprietary-ware in the first place, if at all possible. As others have said, I'm sure this has been rehashed before, and I'm not going to change any minds or policy, particularly since I'm not a Gentoo dev myself. However, I feel strongly enough about this to react, anyway. A couple of the guys on my ISP Unix group keep trying to talk me into going BSD, but I'm really not all that interested, because while I agree there's a place for BSD style licenses, particularly in code with a goal of becoming a reference standard, a large part of my motivation is the fact that I'm supporting a code-returning-to-the-community model, and there'd simply not be the personal drive behind it, were an MS or an Apple (or anyone else) to be able to use my supported community code in a distributed binary and not return their changed back to the pool I'm supporting. That's why I'm here, not on xBSD. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-09 14:13 ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan @ 2004-10-09 17:33 ` Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-10 0:49 ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan 0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread From: Donnie Berkholz @ 2004-10-09 17:33 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1650 bytes --] On Sat, 2004-10-09 at 07:13, Duncan wrote: > Of course the last clause doesn't hold if Gentoo insists on transfer of > copyright, as it could then be taken private. Not that I expect it will > happen, but the insistence on rights assignment, not only GPL licensing > for any code contributed, /does/ leave open both that possibility, and the > question, for those wishing to make such allegations. The same holds true for the FSF, which also has all copyright transferred to it (or given to the public domain). It goes both ways, and to have the things you GPL'd get defended, you have to have a little trust. "With great power comes great responsibility." > There may be those who prefer GPL and for which that license forms much of > their motivation. These sorts of folks take comfort in for instance the > fact that it'd be practically impossible to change the Linux kernel code > license. There are to many parts owned by to many people, and getting > them all to agree would be essentially impossible, as would rewriting the > parts from those who don't agree, because the code is so interwoven. Getting them all to agree when the code is stolen would be difficult as well. > When > a single entity demands ownership of all code, that barrier to taking it > private disappears. Of course, as with the SSH code which went private, > it can then be forked, but some (including myself) prefer preventing the > possibility of it ever going proprietary-ware in the first place, if at > all possible. If you don't trust the Gentoo Foundation, there are bigger issues here. -- Donnie Berkholz Gentoo Linux [-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-09 17:33 ` Donnie Berkholz @ 2004-10-10 0:49 ` Duncan 0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Duncan @ 2004-10-10 0:49 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev Donnie Berkholz posted <1097343230.24256.9.camel@localhost>, excerpted below, on Sat, 09 Oct 2004 10:33:50 -0700: >> There may be those who prefer GPL and for which that license forms much >> of their motivation. These sorts of folks take comfort in for instance >> the fact that it'd be practically impossible to change the Linux kernel >> code license. There are to many parts owned by to many people, and >> getting them all to agree would be essentially impossible, as would >> rewriting the parts from those who don't agree, because the code is so >> interwoven. > > Getting them all to agree when the code is stolen would be difficult as > well. That's the thing, tho. It doesn't /take/ them all agreeing, to take the "illegal appropriator" to court. A case in point is the netfilter stuff. It's in the kernel, but they don't have to get all the kernel contributors on board before taking alleged violators to court. They are being quite active with their enforcement, far more active than most folks. It only takes one guy who's IP has been illegally used to go after them, and if everyone has signed over copyrights and the organization that they've been signed over to can't get agreement to enforce, the people that actually wrote the code can't do much about it, because they no longer have standing to sue. >> When a single entity demands ownership of all code, that barrier to taking >> it private disappears. Of course, as with the SSH code which went >> private, it can then be forked, but some (including myself) prefer >> preventing the possibility of it ever going proprietary-ware in the >> first place, if at all possible. > > If you don't trust the Gentoo Foundation, there are bigger issues here. Well, it's not distrusting the /current/ leadership, but what happens if there's some legal case that Gentoo loses, and can't pay the court ordered fees, so the IP ends up either sold at auction to pay the bills, or defaulted to the person that sued Gentoo? That sort of stuff /does/ happen here in the US. Having it happen to one guy's code, as it might, is easier to work around than having it happen to "the whole enchilada". -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-08 11:47 ` Chris Bainbridge 2004-10-08 14:04 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-08 14:23 ` Mike Frysinger @ 2004-10-10 9:38 ` Paul de Vrieze 2 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Paul de Vrieze @ 2004-10-10 9:38 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 578 bytes --] On Friday 08 October 2004 13:47, Chris Bainbridge wrote: > Instead of having a large globally distributed group of people each capable > of taking legal action against infringers, we now have one > NFP legal entity that afaik exists (legally) only in 1 US state. It is based in New Mexico. That does not mean however that the foundation does not have full worldwide powers. That's how these things work. Countries recognize eachother's ideas of a company. Paul -- Paul de Vrieze Gentoo Developer Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-07 20:59 [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-07 22:02 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-08 11:47 ` Chris Bainbridge @ 2004-10-30 2:50 ` Aron Griffis 2004-10-30 5:08 ` Aron Griffis 2 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread From: Aron Griffis @ 2004-10-30 2:50 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 617 bytes --] Donnie Berkholz wrote: [Thu Oct 07 2004, 04:59:47PM EDT] > If everyone agrees to this, we can start adding these to gentoo/src/ > or whatever other location makes sense. I'd guess at least X and > kernel people would be interested -- maybe others with large > patchsets, such as toolchain. I've read this whole thread and haven't yet seen a reason we can't do this, i.e. designate an area for non-Gentoo patches in cvs. Though I think it would make more sense to create a new cvs module called "non-gentoo" Did I miss an argument against this in the thread? Regards, Aron -- Aron Griffis Gentoo Linux Developer [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 190 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS 2004-10-30 2:50 ` Aron Griffis @ 2004-10-30 5:08 ` Aron Griffis 0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread From: Aron Griffis @ 2004-10-30 5:08 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-dev [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 159 bytes --] I also just realized I responded to a thread from three weeks ago. Sorry if it's no longer relevant... Regards, Aron -- Aron Griffis Gentoo Linux Developer [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 190 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2004-10-30 5:15 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 25+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2004-10-07 20:59 [gentoo-dev] non-Gentoo stuff in our CVS Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-07 22:02 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-08 11:47 ` Chris Bainbridge 2004-10-08 14:04 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-08 15:27 ` Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-08 15:33 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-08 15:42 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-08 16:28 ` Greg KH 2004-10-08 16:36 ` Jon Portnoy 2004-10-10 9:37 ` Paul de Vrieze 2004-10-10 18:48 ` Anthony Gorecki 2004-10-10 20:36 ` Luke-Jr 2004-10-10 20:47 ` Ciaran McCreesh 2004-10-10 21:16 ` Luke-Jr 2004-10-11 10:47 ` Paul de Vrieze 2004-10-10 22:07 ` Daniel Drake 2004-10-08 17:20 ` Chris Bainbridge 2004-10-08 14:23 ` Mike Frysinger 2004-10-08 16:21 ` Sven Vermeulen 2004-10-09 14:13 ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan 2004-10-09 17:33 ` Donnie Berkholz 2004-10-10 0:49 ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan 2004-10-10 9:38 ` [gentoo-dev] " Paul de Vrieze 2004-10-30 2:50 ` Aron Griffis 2004-10-30 5:08 ` Aron Griffis
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