Re: Seeking input from developers: glibc copyright assignment policy.

["Bradley M. Kuhn" <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>]

> On 7/4/21 10:28 PM, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> > It is procedurally easier to use a group name: "The GNU Toolchain Authors"
> > but we can honour requests to do otherwise.

Paul Eggert wrote:
> OK, so the start of the file with some DCOed contributions would look
> something like this?
>
>   /* Word-wrapping and line-truncating streams.
>      Copyright (C) 1997-2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>      Copyright (C) 2021-2022 The GNU Toolchain Authors.

Is the “GNU Toolchain Authors” a entity that legally exists?  Only a real
entity should be listed in a copyright notice.  I talked about this in
detail in my earlier post a few days ago:
   https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2021-July/128467.html

Quoting the relevant part of that email:
>> it's a big mistake to create a copyright notice that lists as the legal
>> entity as something that has no legal standing.  So, unless you plan to
>> form an organization called “the glibc Contributors” [or “GNU Toolchain
>> Authors” ], I advise against that notice. [... IANAL and TINLA]

As a way to mitigate this problem and get closer to what you're trying to do,
I make the case again for moving glibc from a file-by-file copyright
inventory mechanism to a single, toplevel file one as I outlined in that
post.  Conservancy can probably spare resources to help if you'd like to do
that.

Joseph Myers wrote:
>>> with no date specified and not naming individual contributors, following
>>> the recommendations at
>>> <https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/copyright-notices-in-open-source-software-projects/>.

These recommendations, and similar ones promulgated by the LF and its SPDX
project, are considered controversial, and legal experts have not formed
consensus around them; by contrast, they are still hotly debated in FOSS
legal and licensing circles. I began proposing the toplevel file COPYRIGHT
notice mechanism as a compromise that solved many of the concerns on both
sides (desire for accurate and complete info vs. the desire for brevity in
a file-by-file situation).  I don't purport it to be a pancea, but it has
some real advantages.

There are also political and negative policy outcomes from failing to
list every copyright holder; I wrote on this issue, which to add a bit of
humor to a dry subject, I dubbed "a Gilligan's Island Copyright Notice":
   http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/28/gilligans-island.html
.. the problem has not substantially changed since that blog post.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him
Policy Fellow & Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy
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