On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 11:06:38PM -0500, Richard Yao wrote: > On 11/17/2012 10:39 PM, Greg KH wrote: > > Anyway, I now see a _very_ dangerous commit in the "Copyright" branch > > that better not get merged into the tree, as it's wrong, and illegal > > under all countries that follow the "normal" body of Copyright Law. It > > should be removed right now before someone gets into trouble, not the > > least of which would be the orginization that the copyright is now being > > attributed to. > > > > Come on people, this is basic copyright law, it's not something > > radically new. It's something that _all_ software developers should > > know, either from school, or any company they have ever worked at. > > > > Please fix this now. > > klondike discussed the copyright branch changes with robbat2 before they > started and there was no problem at the time. We have retained all > copyright notices and looking at the branch, I find nothing objectionable.
Seriously? Look at the comment I made on that commit for details, but here it is again: You can not claim copyright on a file you did not do one of the two things: - create yourself - modify in a "major" manner Adding a comment at the top saying it is part of the eudev project and covered under the LGPL2+ does not meet either of these requirements at all. By merely importing a file into a new project, you can not claim copyright on it. That's the law. The fact that this was reviewed by someone makes me seriously wonder about the copyright policies of the Gentoo Foundation. Also, you can not assign copyright to a third party, unless you have a copyright assignment form. Do the developers doing this work have such a form assigned? And in what country and state is that form valid for? Different countries, and states, have different laws here, and one-form-fits-all is not true anywhere. So blindly adding a Gentoo Foundation copyright to _any_ file in this repo, that has not met one of the two above rules, is illegal, and grounds for opening the Gentoo Foundation up to big trouble. > Would you mind joining us in IRC to discuss your concerns? I don't do IRC anymore, sorry. Email is the best way to reach me. thanks, greg k-h
