commit: 914f141cfb992282bfb5e1cf083ef32512e65bd2 Author: Richard Freeman <rich0 <AT> gentoo <DOT> org> AuthorDate: Tue Mar 27 17:23:31 2018 +0000 Commit: Ulrich Müller <ulm <AT> gentoo <DOT> org> CommitDate: Sun Jun 10 18:42:07 2018 +0000 URL: https://gitweb.gentoo.org/data/glep.git/commit/?id=914f141c
glep-0076: Add initial text for motivation. Signed-off-by: Richard Freeman <rich0 <AT> gentoo.org> glep-0076.rst | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+) diff --git a/glep-0076.rst b/glep-0076.rst index cb4b1a6..569cc63 100644 --- a/glep-0076.rst +++ b/glep-0076.rst @@ -28,6 +28,32 @@ Abstract Motivation ========== +In the past Gentoo developers signed contributor licensing agreements +formally assigning copyright to the Gentoo Foundation, and copyright +headers in individual files reflected this. Then at some point in +time these formal agreements no longer were being signed, but the +headers remained, and were enshrined in policy. This led to a +situation where copyright ownership might be ambiguous. + +Also, the general policy to have Gentoo Foundation copyright notices +caused an issue when Gentoo developers forked another project and +hosted the fork on Gentoo infrastructure. To comply with the previous +policy the copyright notices were modified, which caused concerns +with the project the files were forked from. Our previous policy +completely neglected the possibility that Gentoo might want to host +files that were not created internally. + +Finally, since the early days of Gentoo new ideas around copyright +licensing have become more popular, such as the FSFE's Fiduciary +License Agreement, which takes a copyleft approach to copyright +licensing, while also better complying with copyright laws in nations +that have author's rights. + +The goal here was to create a policy that was both flexible enough to +cover forks and situations where Gentoo would not own the majority of +the copyright in a file, while also preserving our ability to formally +own copyrights on as much of our works as possible. + Specification =============
