Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
Hi, I'm currently hacking on the maven-repo-helper package. The source code contains copyright statements from the original author. Now when I add classes it would be logical to add Copyright 2013 Thomas Koch. But I don't see any sense in this. I've no interest to be the copyright holder. I'd much rather like to write Copyright 2013 The Debian Project. (Actually I'm totally annoyed by anything related to copyright...) Do you have any advise for code that originates in the Debian project? CC-ing debian-java but this discussion might be best for debian-project. If you think that it makes sense to identify the original author of some code: there is still the @author annotation in many languages. And the best thing is to use the appropriate tool for exactly this: git blame (or git praise!). Regards, Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201302091724.3.tho...@koch.ro
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 05:23:59PM +0100, Thomas Koch wrote: I'm currently hacking on the maven-repo-helper package. The source code contains copyright statements from the original author. Now when I add classes it would be logical to add Copyright 2013 Thomas Koch. But I don't see any sense in this. I've no interest to be the copyright holder. I'd much rather like to write Copyright 2013 The Debian Project. (Actually I'm totally annoyed by anything related to copyright...) Do you have any advise for code that originates in the Debian project? In essence, you're asking for some sort of volunteer copyright assignment (or more likely contributor licensing agreement), similar to what KDE e.V. offers to contributors of the KDE project, see http://ev.kde.org/rules/fla.php Those kind of agreements are entirely optional and interesting for contributors like you, who don't want to care about copyright related matter and empower trusted 3rd party entities to take care of them (e.g. for licensing enforcements if/when the need arises). It wouldn't make sense to assign copyright to the Debian Project, but it might make sense to assign it to some of our trusted organization, like SPI. I'm myself not aware of mechanisms offered by SPI to allow volunteer copyright assignment. Hence I've just asked on the spi-general mailing list if that is something the organization is interested in supporting. I'll let you know if I hear back of anything actionable; in the mean time you can follow the discussion there. Thanks for raising this topic! Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli lea...@debian.org wrote: On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 05:23:59PM +0100, Thomas Koch wrote: I'm currently hacking on the maven-repo-helper package. The source code contains copyright statements from the original author. Now when I add classes it would be logical to add Copyright 2013 Thomas Koch. But I don't see any sense in this. I've no interest to be the copyright holder. I'd much rather like to write Copyright 2013 The Debian Project. (Actually I'm totally annoyed by anything related to copyright...) Do you have any advise for code that originates in the Debian project? In essence, you're asking for some sort of volunteer copyright assignment (or more likely contributor licensing agreement), similar to what KDE e.V. offers to contributors of the KDE project, see http://ev.kde.org/rules/fla.php Those kind of agreements are entirely optional and interesting for contributors like you, who don't want to care about copyright related matter and empower trusted 3rd party entities to take care of them (e.g. for licensing enforcements if/when the need arises). It wouldn't make sense to assign copyright to the Debian Project, but it might make sense to assign it to some of our trusted organization, like SPI. I'm myself not aware of mechanisms offered by SPI to allow volunteer copyright assignment. Hence I've just asked on the spi-general mailing list if that is something the organization is interested in supporting. I'll let you know if I hear back of anything actionable; in the mean time you can follow the discussion there. Thanks for raising this topic! Zack, It may also be worth reaching out to the Software Freedom Conservancy if this turns out to be out of scope for SPI http://sfconservancy.org/members/current/ (If I recall the SFLC helped get them off the ground, and they were founded to own projects that weren't a good fit for the FSF's GNU project). -Brian Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cacfairw6bhc+yctg78wfynzmnkkf_t7hjowaaixqas+hmk-...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 01:00:27PM -0500, Brian Gupta wrote: It may also be worth reaching out to the Software Freedom Conservancy if this turns out to be out of scope for SPI http://sfconservancy.org/members/current/ (If I recall the SFLC helped get them off the ground, and they were founded to own projects that weren't a good fit for the FSF's GNU project). Thanks Brian. As a matter of fact, I discuss with Bradley (Conservancy's Executive Director) fairly regularly and I've in the past discussed with him the possibilities of benefiting of SF Conservancy services as Debian Project. The problem is that SF Conservancy, for various good reasons, adopt a more exclusive model than SPI. They generally do not welcome projects that have assets (of various kinds) scattered throughout different organizations, which is the case for Debian. This has been a blocker in the past. It *might* be that voluntary copyright assignments are a special case, especially if SPI does not offer that service, but I very much doubt it. Either way, several people active in SF Conservancy people are also active on SPI mailing list, so we won't miss chances of collaborating on this if there are some! Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
Stefano Zacchiroli lea...@debian.org writes: Thanks Brian. As a matter of fact, I discuss with Bradley (Conservancy's Executive Director) fairly regularly and I've in the past discussed with him the possibilities of benefiting of SF Conservancy services as Debian Project. The problem is that SF Conservancy, for various good reasons, adopt a more exclusive model than SPI. They generally do not welcome projects that have assets (of various kinds) scattered throughout different organizations, which is the case for Debian. This has been a blocker in the past. Doesn't Debian as a whole also have nearly as many assets as all other projects in the Software Freedom Conservancy put together? It may not be healthy for them to take on Debian, as we could fairly easily turn into the tail that wags the dog. I think they mostly deal with much smaller projects than we are. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87txpls39q@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 11:20:17AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Doesn't Debian as a whole also have nearly as many assets as all other projects in the Software Freedom Conservancy put together? In terms of reserves, it might be. But in terms of expenses / revenue they're way more active than we are due to the fact they have employees (for the orga itself or on behalf of affiliated projects), revenues from court settlement, etc. Both SPI and SFC are very transparent in their budgets, so anyone can check the actual numbers. ... here we're getting off-topic I suspect :) -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Recruitment of young contributors (Re: Young people and computers)
Hi Moray, Moray Allan wrote: There's been some discussion elsewhere about how young people's experience of computers has changed over the years, and how this might interact with our success in recruiting young people into Debian. I would estimate that the conversation focused on 16-20 year-olds, as it started after someone pointed to the graph of developers' claimed ages at http://people.debian.org/~spaillard/developers-age-histogramm/devs-age-histo.2013-01-01.png http://people.debian.org/%7Espaillard/developers-age-histogramm/devs-age-histo.2013-01-01.png A few points from that discussion (not trying to be an exhaustive summary): - The conversation wondered how much the number of younger people coming to Debian might have reduced due to changes in wider computer use/culture. Certainly, programming languages used to be an advertised part of the system, where now they are typically an optional add-on, hidden, or effectively unavailable to the users of certain types of device. - It was also pointed out that we have several groups of Debian contributors who came from successful local projects, e.g. university computer groups. It seems that many such university groups themselves recruit fewer new members than they used to, so the change may not only be that Debian gets fewer of the people trained in them. (One factor mentioned for their own recruitment trouble was that many students have less reason than a few years ago to spend time around computer labs.) - Another factor that makes a difference to how young people spend their time on computers may be the availability of always-on internet access. I know that, once I had a computer at home, but before I had any kind of internet connection there, I started to do programming projects to fill in my school holidays; perhaps nowadays I would have spent the time chatting online, or using the computer to collaborate on something productive other than programming. - A change mentioned that might be more positive is that it's now much easier to get programs distributed to people who will find them useful. While we might not like app stores etc. and the typical lack of source code, this still gives people a greater motivation to create software (including a greater chance that it will reach others who need something to solve the same problem) than existed for most amateur programmers before. If you agree, as I would, that it's useful for Debian to recruit more young people -- they often have a lot of spare time, and a lot of enthusiasm, and good connections to influence and recruit others who might be interested in helping -- then what do you think Debian could do differently to encourage this? How much do you think is due to general factors like those above, and how much due to changes in Debian and in how it's perceived? How much of what? Your question may be interesting, but I don't know what discussion you're referring to and the only data above simply shows the age of members. The graph is nice, but it doesn't show the age of members at the time they are recruited, and even less how that age changes with time. If we actually have such data, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one to appreciate.
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
Le Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 05:23:59PM +0100, Thomas Koch a écrit : I've no interest to be the copyright holder. I'd much rather like to write Copyright 2013 The Debian Project. (Actually I'm totally annoyed by anything related to copyright...) Hi Thomas, I share the same feeling and in some of my latest packages, I simply make no mention of copyright for my contributions, so that they are distributed under the same terms as the whole. Cheers, -- Charles -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130209223343.gb17...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
On 10/02/2013 03:14, Paul Wise wrote: My advice would just to put Copyright 2013 Thomas Koch and a DFSG-free license, anything else would be more effort on your part. I've considered using Copyright 2013 Debian Project for the licensing of packaging that's intended to go into Debian. What would happen if I do that? Would the package get rejected? Is it possible for an entity like Debian to gain copyright to something if it's more or less unknowingly? -Jonathan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51171c10.9070...@ubuntu.com
Re: Copyright assignement for Debian tools?
Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) jonat...@ubuntu.com writes: On 10/02/2013 03:14, Paul Wise wrote: My advice would just to put Copyright 2013 Thomas Koch and a DFSG-free license, anything else would be more effort on your part. I've considered using Copyright 2013 Debian Project for the licensing of packaging that's intended to go into Debian. What would happen if I do that? Would the package get rejected? Is it possible for an entity like Debian to gain copyright to something if it's more or less unknowingly? I'm not sure what the ftp-team would do, but that statement is basically legally meaningless. It doesn't change the fact that you personally hold the copyright, it doesn't give anyone in Debian (or Software in the Public Interest) the ability to defend the license in court... it basically has the same amount of effect as putting the moon is made of green cheese in your packaging. (There may be some impact on seeking statutory damages in countries like the US where damages can change based on the presence of a copyright notice, but that's pretty much an edge case.) -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/878v6woj5e@windlord.stanford.edu
