Re: [gentoo-project] Bad license and attribution by ChromiumOS and CoreOS

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 3:53 AM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> Since this is a copy of Gentoo ebuilds this is demonstrably wrong, the
>> copyrights on the files themselves are intact. Copyright is obviously
>> Gentoo Foundation, and license is GPL-2.
>
> Thanks for noticing this. Quoting the GPL-2:
>
>    4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
>    except as expressly provided under this License.  Any attempt
>    otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
>    void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
>
> Does this apply here? It would mean that Google's rights to distribute
> the Portage tree have been terminated.

I'd probably talk to a lawyer before celebrating the death of Google.

All the copyright notices in the files are intact.  As far as I can
tell Google hasn't done anything that actually violates the GPL.  The
only complaint here is that there is a readme file with a different
copyright notice inside.  The issue is trivially correctable by Google
by simply fixing the notice, or clarifying what it applies to.  No
court is going to prefer permanently terminating Google's rights to
distribute ChromeOS over simply letting them clean things up.

Besides, is the goal of Gentoo really to kill off the #1 used open
source desktop OS in the world which is based on Gentoo?  That hardly
sounds like "Gentoo lives for the community, by the community" as
stated in the Foundation's charter.  The purpose of our copyrights is
to preserve Gentoo so that all can benefit from it, not to club people
over the head with if they dare to actually use Gentoo and make a
mistake.

Honestly, I'm a bit concerned by some of the talk in this thread.
What kind of message to we want to send to companies or organizations
that use Gentoo?  Do we really want the message to be "better not slip
up, because Gentoo is the kind of group that will get your site taken
down on a weekend over a readme file?"  Don't get me wrong - I think
Google has benefitted a great deal from Gentoo and I'd love to see
they contribute back more actively than they already do (we do have
people doing 10% time work for Gentoo and we have benefitted from past
GSoC).

How would we want to be treated in the reverse situation?  I was
annoyed when it seemed like everybody was over-reacting over the eudev
copyright notice fiasco.  Copyright is complicated, and most people
working on software are not lawyers, and since there isn't a ton of
open source case law even the lawyers can disagree on where the lines
are.  When somebody infringes on your copyright the solution is to
work with them to fix things, so that the scope of open source
software is increased and the public benefits, not to act like the
RIAA.  Since we are an open community, we make our mistakes in the
public light - we should afford the same leniency to others since we
WANT others to act as open communities as well.

I'm sure if we ask Google nicely to clean things up they will.  That
is the best outcome for the general public, and the best outcome for
Gentoo.  Remember, we can borrow their code as well, and some of our
devs do just that.  If we have trouble getting through to them the
legal issues would allow us to escalate things, but that can be done
in a way that creates opportunities ("hey, while we have you on the
phone, did you realize how much you benefit from Gentoo, and are there
ways we can better partner to improve things for all of our users?").
Why make enemies when we can make friends?

-- 
Rich