Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: copyright attribution clarifications

[Patrick McLean <chutzpah@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 15:23:56 -0800
Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 11:38 AM Patrick McLean <chutzpah@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:58:08 -0800
> > Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >  
> > > On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 11:18 PM Sarah White
> > > <kuzetsa@poindexter.ovh> wrote:  
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > multiline (standard form) copyright attribution doesn't have
> > > > anything to do with licensing, and only serves to strengthen
> > > > copyleft due to the presence of additional copyright notices
> > > > which clearly lay out a list of entities / people with a stake
> > > > in protecting the interests of an opensource project remaining
> > > > FOSS/Libre.  
> > >
> > > First, git already does this.  
> >
> > It does not, it lists authors, not copyright holders which are not
> > the same thing.  
> 
> Nothing prevents us from adding copyright info to commit messages, and
> companies that feel strongly about documenting their copyright over
> their contributions would probably be best off doing it in git where
> it is less likely to get lost/deleted/etc over time.  It would also be
> out of the way for those not looking for this info.

I don't object to adding the copyright notice to the commit message
rather than the ebuild, the only caveat is that the copyright should be
propigated to the rsync tree as well (since most users use rsync rather
than git). Perhaps the "fattening" step could do it, even just a
top-level file listing packages and copyright owners, should not be
overly hard to generate, maybe with a post-push hook that updates it
when a copyright tag is detected in the push.

> > > Second, please cite an example of a copyright lawsuit that was won
> > > because multiple notices were listed, or a law that provides
> > > protection if multiple notices are provided.  Your claim that
> > > doing this "strengthen[s] copyleft" is baseless as far as I can
> > > tell.  
> >
> > I don't think it's about citing cases, the GPL has never gotten to
> > trial AFAIK, so under that metric, the GPL is useless.  
> 
> I suggested that you could cite laws as well.  GPL is well-grounded in
> copyright law (the law says basically that users of software have no
> rights to copy it, and then GPL grants a few extra rights).  The law
> takes away, and the GPL gives the user more freedom than they would
> have otherwise under the law.
> 
> Laundry lists of copyright notices have no particular basis in law, in
> particular because copyright law is already incredibly strong without
> it.  A notice that names any copyright holder defeats an innocent
> infringement defense (which is already a pretty weak defense to begin
> with).  Adding more names to the copyright line doesn't do anything
> else.

IANAL nor do I pretend to be one. A lawyer did instruct me to add the
copyright notices to ebuilds that I work on during work hours.

> In any case, the claim was made that this "strengthens copyright" and
> it is up to those making a claim to back it up with some kind of law
> (statutory or case law), not just argue that more text must be better.

AFAIK no one on this list/thread is a lawyer, so much if this is not
particularly valuable. Personally, I don't see why there is a strong
objection to a practice that is quite common in open source code.