Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] GLEP 76: Copyright Policy [v4]

[NP-Hardass <NP-Hardass@gentoo.org>]

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On 09/29/2018 03:46 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Fri, 28 Sep 2018, kuzetsa  wrote:
> 
>> Summary / emphasis: the copyright protection for a
>> legal entity or pseudonymous author (copyright holder)
>> may also have validity outside the copyright holder or
>> author's jurisdiction under the berne convention.
> 
> A work is protected by copyright even if it doesn't carry any copyright
> notice at all. Our policy requires a notice mainly to protect us against
> a possible "innocent infringement" defense under U.S. law:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_notice#Reasons_to_include_an_optional_copyright_notice
> 
> IANAL, but as I understand it, the requirements for the name that
> appears in a copyright notice are rather lax, and your quote from the
> Berne convention seems to confirm that. Also there is nothing in the
> GLEP's wording that would forbid the use of a pseudonym in the copyright
> notice, as long as it will qualify as an identifier of the copyright
> holder. (The Signed-off-by line is a different issue, though.)
> 
> Ulrich
> 

"For commits made using a VCS, the committer shall certify agreement to
the Certificate of Origin by adding Signed-off-by: Name <e-mail> to the
commit message as a separate line. Committers must use their real name,
i.e., the name that would appear in an official document like a passport."

"By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
[...]
The contribution was provided directly to me by some other person who
certified 1., 2., 3., or 4., and I have not modified it."

Which means a contribution of pseudonymous copywritten code cannot be
made.  The person making the commit cannot sign off on it unless the
author signs off on it, and the author cannot sign off on it because
that requires that the author not be pseudonymous.

UNLESS you think this falls under #2:
"The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of my
knowledge, is covered under an appropriate free software license, and I
have the right under that license to submit that work with
modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under the same
free software license (unless I am permitted to submit under a different
license), as indicated in the file; or"
Which, as written, means that the committer must make a modifications to
the pseudonymous work to qualify as "[FOSS licensed and] created in
whole or in part by me."
The premise of which is that pseudonymous contributions aren't allowed
unless the author submits it as a patch, not using a VCS (as
contributions via VCS must use the Certificate of Origin), and the
committer makes some trivial modification to them, and then, by magic,
we avoid requirements for real names.

Honestly, the whole thing comes across as a massive double
standard/loophole with no real purpose behind it.  If pseudonymous code
is to be accepted for the sake of copyright, then how does one make a
pseudonymous contribution?  If one cannot make a pseudonymous
contribution, then we should be stating that explicitly.

[Quoted from elsewhere for the sake of reducing ML spam]
> "Not sure how all that is relevant for the v4 update. The real name
> was already required in v3, which has been accepted by both Council
> and Trustees.

> v4 is merely a clarification that rules for copyright notice (where a
> legal entity can be listed) and sign-off (which must be by a natural
> person) are different."

TBH, just because this criticism is being levied at the time of v4
doesn't mean that the passing of v3 was without issue.

-- 
NP-Hardass


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