Re: [gentoo-dev] Copyright issues (Was: udev-ng?)

["Anthony G. Basile" <basile@opensource.dyc.edu>]

On 11/18/2012 11:34 PM, Greg KH wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 11:21:20PM -0500, Richard Yao wrote:
>> On 11/18/2012 11:22 PM, Greg KH wrote:
>>> On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 11:05:05PM -0500, Richard Yao wrote:
>>>> On 11/18/2012 09:58 PM, Greg KH wrote:
>>>
>>> <an on-topic discussion about copyright thread response from me snipped>
>>>
>>>> We develop open source software in public repositories. A developer
>>>> decided it would be helpful to change the software name systemd to
>>>> eudev, among other things, in various files after misunderstanding what
>>>> the Foundation officers in charge of legal matters had approved. You
>>>> objected to it. I asked for clarification after seeing that your name
>>>> had not been removed from any copyright notices. You explained your
>>>> complaint. I asked you to wait for the person who wrote the commit to
>>>> fix it. It was fixed.
>>>>
>>>> That is all that was necessary. Whining on the list did not wake the
>>>> author of that commit sooner. Furthermore, the changes that you wanted
>>>> would have been made in a few days had you not become involved.
>>>
>>> None of the words you wrote here seem to me to be related to my response
>>> about copyright, the Gentoo Foundation, and how copyright works for
>>> software projects at all.  So I'm a bit confused, what are you concerned
>>> about here?
>>>
>>> greg k-h
>>
>> Your issue has been resolved. You can stop beating the dead horse now.
>
> I was responding to a discussion about how copyright works, and how it
> should be marked as such for Gentoo-related projects, that was not
> correct in my knowledge of copyright law.  It had nothing to do with "my
> issue", or the udev issue at all, which is why I even changed the
> subject.
>
> Oh well.
>
> *plonk*

Greg,

Thank you for these responses because they did help me understand 
copyright/left better.  I appreciate your expertise in the matter and 
would hope I can draw on it again in the future, because despite what 
you said a few emails ago, copyright/left is not something that every 
software developer understands.

My fundamental confusion was over the question of what is the smallest 
copyrightable unit.  I think in terms of blame/kudos and the unit that 
comes to mind is one commit, properly isolated.  When a project becomes 
serious, I get careful about the signoffs vs authors vs reporters etc. 
And "blame" is as much a part of the game as "kudos".

The other levels are files and projects.  So this leads to the other 
confusion, do you touch every file in the project when forking etc.

The answer appears to be that a file is the unit, but from practice I've 
seen all three.  What is correct is what passes in the courts and I do 
not want to, nor have I ever, tested that.  Thus working with copyright 
is fundamentally different than working with code because I can readily 
test one but not the other.  Since you only gain experience by doing 
something, I can confidently say I have zero copyright experience.

Again thanks.

-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph. D.
Professor of Information Technology
D'Youville College
Buffalo, NY 14201
(716) 829-8197