Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
On Wed, Sep 27, 2006 at 05:56:56PM -0400, Garrett Rooney wrote:
If Sun or Covalent gives a damn about getting properly credited then
they can tell their committers to use their @themothership.com address
on the list.
When people gain commit, with emphasis on the word "people" there,
we generally start refering to them by name only.
As a meritocracy, we give credit to the individuals who write code or
docs or whatever, and that's what names in CHANGES are really about.
We don't give a crap who they work for, or if they change jobs, or
e-mail addresses, the credit is personal to them.
Acknowledging a copyright is a different thing IMO. Personal
contributors can own their own copyright, or frequently, it may be owned
by their employer. If a copyright owner wants the acknowledgement
they are rightly entitled there is nothing we can do about it. Basic
copyright law, and the ASL 2.0 4.c (which is how the work is licensed
to us) definitely apply.
It's a good idea that copyright owners get explicit notices if they want
them, after all if someone wants to re-license that content, or if they
suspect an infringement, they need to contact the primary copyright
owner.
We can choose to accept he patch with those terms, or to not accept it,
but we absolutely cannot over-ride the copyright owners wishes.
Of course, we can come up with a useful suggestion, hopefully acceptable
to all. but it's worth noting that right now ASL 2.0 4.d basically
suggests that the NOTICES file is the correct place for notices of this
nature.
This is a very good comment and says everything I have to say for this
topic, I chose to keep silence in purpose before we can settle down the
discussion. :-)
Glad to tell you that our legal department is sane enough and agreed we
can just drop the notice as option 1.a. Hopefully this remove the hurdle
and can get the code committed.
Should I submit the patch once again or this email is enough to show you
we agree to drop the copyright notice?
This is taking longer than what I had expected, as from very beginning
we wanted to contribute the code. It's me that not being familiar with
both Sun's process and Apache's process. It feels good all the
legal/process issues seems to be completed. :-)
Cheers,
Henry
