Copyright question - ebuilds on external resources

[charles17]

Is it ok when external resources use their own copyright for an ebuild?
The reason for this question is, I've pull requested the update of the lumina live ebuild to upstream leaving their header as it was before.

[NeddySeagoon]

charles17,

It can't go into the main tree like that, repoman won't let it.
International copyright is a mess. It makes lawyers rich.

I could say a lot more on the topic but the answer won't change.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[1clue]

Actually I think it can't be distributed like that, main tree or not.

You can't change a license without the owner's permission. In some cases the owner is a commercial entity who releases existing commercial software with an open source license. In most cases it's a group of programmers who contributed to the code.

In the former case, a company who maintains a commercial product which has a branch or subset which is open sourced (oracle java for example) then they can make rules regarding that software. They can state that any code submitted back to the project will be used in their commercial product at the discretion of the product maintainers, and they may reserve the right to release that software under some other license as well. That will be stated in the license for that project.

In the latter case, in order to change the license you would need to find each developer who worked on the project. Even a single line commit once by some guy who found a bug, that guy needs to be contacted and give permission to change the license.

In some cases the code is released under <license name> <current version> or later. That means that any newer version of that license may be applied to that code. For example, GPL v2 or later.

In your case the BSD license shown is extremely permissive, and AFAIK the only thing you can't do is modify the license after release or remove attribution. Which is what seems to have happened here. That's why you can't put it back in the main tree like that.

[NeddySeagoon]

1clue,

Well spotted. I missed the licence issue entirely.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Ant P.]

I'd say repoman is broken and its header check worthless.

For my own overlays I play along with the charade and put the Gentoo copyright text there to shut it up, but I also have a huge disclaimer in the README file that those notices are only there to satisfy a script and aren't worth the electrons they're printed on. What matters in a court of law (not that it would ever come to it) isn't a robotic interpretation of text, but intent, and I made mine loud and clear.

It's a lot like SSL certificates: you're probably safer visiting a website with (carefully planned out) self-signed ones, but it's hard to know that when the computer is screaming at you. Most programmers end up serving the computer when it should be the opposite.

[NeddySeagoon]

Ant P.

Here's the history as I have pieced it together from mailing list archives.
I've tried to include references too.

It explains how we got to where we are. There is no attempt to explore the rights and wrongs of where we are today.
Corrections welcome.

Many individuals cannot assign copyright. Its illegal for German nationals.
Others have it taken away by employment contracts, so they don't even own the copyright to start with.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Ant P.]

So the Foundation is just keeping the engine running, and the Council is the one that keeps swerving into ditches? ;)

Useful to know though. I always thought there was a lot more overlap.