Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Watch out for license changes to GPL-3.

[Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org>]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 15:14 -0400, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 20:07 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> 
> > Unless there are third party repositories shipping their own
> > from-scratch ebuilds... In which case, afaics there's nothing to stop
> > *them* from going GPL-3 if they think there's a reason to do so. Unless
> > the Foundation somehow claims that all ebuilds, even those
> > from-scratch, are derived works?
> 
> What's the case here?  Third-party ebuilds being contributed into the
> tree via bugzilla and other means?  Or third-party ebuilds from joe
> shmoe off www.joeshmoesebuilds.com?
> 
> The second case is meaningless to Gentoo.   The first case needs to be
> considered.  The question there, I suppose, is: do we *require*
> contributors to license ebuilds as GPL-2?  And if that is the case,
> that's what stops them.
> 
> It would be an interesting question, though, to prove that someone wrote
> a from-scratch ebuild via looking only at the documentation, and without
> basing any parts off of already existing ebuilds in the tree, no?

How likely is this?

Let me put it another way.  I write ebuilds all the time.  I don't need
to look at the documentation or any other ebuilds to write a new one.
However, any ebuild I write is a derived work of previous ebuilds.  Why?
Because I used skel.ebuild and other ebuilds already in the tree as the
basis for the ebuilds I originally wrote.  Because I no longer need to
actually *look* at other ebuilds doesn't change that my entire knowledge
base for ebuild writing is derived from other ebuilds, which were based
on other ebuilds before them.  Also, I would find it very difficult, if
not impossible, to write an ebuild that is even slightly complex without
using the eclasses, at all.  Sure, it is *possible* that someone is
capable of writing an ebuild entirely from scratch, but the likelihood
is pretty much nonexistent.

We could just end this really quickly and require all ebuilds submitted
be done under GPLv2.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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