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

[Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org>]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:11:36 +0100
Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@ciaranm.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:06:05 -0400
> Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > third parties are free to license however they like.
> 
> Could the Foundation make a formal statement to that effect, and could
> wolf31o2 retract his claim that all ebuilds are derived works of
> skel.ebuild?

Chris doesn't need to retract his claim, because his claim is very
likely false or at best immaterial. Finding out whether one work is a
derivative of another is much too expensive. It's easier to state a
copyright claim, in effect surrendering the copyright to the Gentoo
Foundation, and be done with it, and then let the Gentoo Foundation set
the license, in this case GPL-2. This happens to be exactly what the
<header.txt> file[0] in gentoo-x86 is for, but sadly there is no
documentation that explains this policy at all, it seems.

To be exact, by submitting an ebuild, you actively surrender the
copyright to the ebuild to the Gentoo Foundation, formerly Gentoo
Technologies, Inc. [1], the original commit of skel.build (later
skel.ebuild) already made this very clear:

# Copyright 1999-2000 Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or
later
# Author Your Name <your email>
# $Header$

I remember seeing a less subtle statement to this effect (that the
copyright to anything you submit to Gentoo's CVS is passed on to
the Gentoo Project) a long time ago, probably in the devrel/recruiters
documentation during my own recruitment. Right now I can only find
this:

  "===Headers===

When you submit your ebuilds, the header should be exactly the same as
the one in /usr/portage/header.txt. Most importantly, do not modify it
in anyway and make sure that the $Header: $ line is intact."[2]

Sadly, currently no document on www.gentoo.org explains the judicial
better than [3], which has this:

"The bureaucracy we mention includes:

[...]

-     juridical protection: backing up the licenses Gentoo uses,
      maintaining the copyrights on Gentoo's software, documentation and
      other assets and protecting Gentoo's intellectual property"

and also:

"In other words, the Gentoo Foundation will:

[...]

-     protect the developed code, documentation, artwork and other
      material through copyright and licenses"

I think this lack of clarity calls for some changes to at least the
policy documents. Ebuilds can probably not be considered proper
derivatives of skel.[e]build, but IANAL, I can only say that having a
court find this would be very expensive, whatever the outcome.


Therefore, the copyright to an ebuild is or should be actively and
simply turned over to the Gentoo Foundation by the developer, and this
should be made policy and should be explained properly in a few places
in our documentation.

Should I file a documentation bug about this?


Kind regards,
     JeR

[0] http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/header.txt
[1] http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/skel.ebuild
[2]
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=2&chap=1
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