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

[William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>]

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On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 06:50:52PM +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> | * Notice identifies the copyright owner at the time the work was first
> |   published for parties seeking permission to use the work.
> | * Notice identifies the year of first publication, which may be used
> |   to determine the term of copyright protection in the case of an
> |   anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire.
> | * Notice may prevent the work from becoming an orphan work by
> |   identifying the copyright owner and specifying the term of the
> |   copyright.
> 
> For "indentifying the copyright owner" nothing short of a complete list
> will suffice. Especially, a notice like the following (which mentions
> only "Gentoo Authors" and "Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.") does
> not help with that at all (i.e., it is no better than the simplified
> notice):
> https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/sys-cluster/ceph/ceph-13.2.2-r2.ebuild?id=5f77c21f23bf1c4cfb9e68be7aa27669c8146e8e#n1

Remember that in the US, SIE is a legal entity, so it can  hold
copyrights, just like a person can. It is like "Gentoo Foundation, Inc."

So, there would be two contributors in that ebuild: "Gentoo Authors"
and SIE.

> Besides, these last three items are pretty much moot for a work released
> under the GPL-2 (which grants "permission to use"), and I think that
> even you aren't suggesting that we should go for a complete list of
> contributors.

You are right, I'm not advocating for a complete list of contributors.
I'm just advocating for flexability where contributors want it, and SIE
is one of those contributors that wants it.

William

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