Re: [gentoo-dev] Why should copyright assignment be a requirement?

[Daniel Robbins <drobbins@gentoo.org>]

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On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 01:09:25AM -0400, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> > Would it not be possible for copyright to be assigned to Gentoo and the
> > author of the ebuild?
> 
> That's what we needed information from Daniel's lawyer about.

I've been trying to get people to keep their names in the copyright line for
over a year, but no one has really started doing it. To my knowledge, it is
better to have multiple official copyright holders for GPL code than just a
single copyright holder. I would like all our ebuilds to have a copyright
like this:

# Copyright 2003 Gentoo Technologies, Joe User, and others (see cvs
# changelog.) Distributed under the GPL version 2.

I don't see why this would be a problem for anyone, and makes a lot more
sense than what we are doing now. 

What we are doing now began way back when we figured out that slapping a
"Copyright 2000 Gentoo Technologies, Inc." allowed us to comply with the GPL
and get back to coding. That's all there is to our current "policy," folks.
I am very much hoping that people will start using shared copyrights soon.
I think it's very bad to continue using the single "Copyright Gentoo" one,
and hope that some developers will start doing this. This is one trend that
I can't start, since all the work I do is under the Gentoo Technologies,
Inc. name. While I know that I'm not going to rip Gentoo off, the primary
benefit to me is that it quells those who enjoy being paranoid about my
intentions.

The rules should be:

ebuilds should be copyright Gentoo Technologies, Inc. *and* the original
author/submitter, with a note for all additional cvs committers. What this
does is prevent Gentoo or the original committer or later contributors from
changing the license away from the GPL 2 unless all copyright holders agree.
This basically makes it practically impossible for code to be hijacked from
our tree, or from our users (by me presumably, after going on some kind of
evil kick.) This seems near-ideal. It would be helpful if a GPL and
copyright expert could review and comment.

> > I believe that this has been discussed previously on this list (when I get
> > a chance I'll search my archive) and that there was an agreement reached
> > between Gentoo and an educational institution on this very matter.
> 
> Was that agreement actually reached? I have been away from development 
> and not very involved for a couple weeks.

I need to contact them; haven't had time to follow up after LWE. After
thinking a bit about this, it's probably best that I ask Richard Stallman
what he recommends since he is likely to be much more versed in the ins and
outs of this kind of thing than the typical IP lawyer who is not very
familiar with the GPL. I'll cc this email to Richard and see what he says.

Richard, your input would certainly be welcome, and I can forward all
replies you send me to the gentoo-dev list (gentoo-dev is subscriber post
only.)

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins
Chief Architect, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org

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