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

["Harald van Dijk" <truedfx@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 09:42:49PM +0200, Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
> On Sunday, 08. July 2007 21:12:38 Harald van Dijk wrote:
> > > "# Copyright 1999-2007 Gentoo Foundation"
> > > Thus, the copyright owner/holder is the Gentoo Foundation.
> > If I write an ebuild today, why does it not say "Copyright 2007"? 
> 
> Probably because different legal systems require different formats of the 
> copyright notice. Over here, "copyright 2007" would be fully sufficient.

If the copyright notice doesn't apply at least in part to skel.ebuild
and/or the whole tree, it's not possible for "Copyright 1999-2007" to be
required anywhere.

> > It's because the copyright notice applies to skel.ebuild and/or the 
> > tree as a whole. Whether it also applies to the individual 
> > contributions is what I'm curious about.
> 
> TTBOMK, it applies to each and every individual ebuild. The tree itself 
> doesn't seem to have a separate copyright notice and I see no need for it 
> either.

As I recall from previous discussions, the tree as a whole is
copyrighted, essentially because it is not clear whether the majority of
ebuilds are copyrightable by themselves.

> As for contributions without a clear copyright notice, it would, IMHO, be 
> best to make sure (e. g. by adding some legal blah to Bugzilla) they're 
> original works to be licenced under (currently) the GPL-2 or derived from 
> a product with a compatible licence by the contributor.

If the Foundation needs the right to relicense code, this should also be
made clear (e.g. in the "legal blah" that would be added to Bugzilla).

> > If you can give a clear way to separate licenses which should be
> > allowable, from those which should not, then please share. 
> 
> Sorry, that's both beyond my legal knowledge and my sphere of interest. :)
> 
> I think we all agree that ebuilds should be released under an open source 
> licence. That's good enough for me. :-)

I can agree with that. What I care about is the right to decide on the
license for code that is entirely written by myself. I don't really care
how the tree is licensed.
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