Message-ID: <e363mzanav4inu3wtk5pmyzfwlquxr5kwh7ytk5emtayizi7qi@dqxritlnl22g>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2025 23:04:47 +0200
From: Alejandro Colomar <alx@...nel.org>
To: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@...hat.com>
Cc: "Andries E. Brouwer" <aeb@....nl>, linux-man@...r.kernel.org, 
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, libc-alpha@...rceware.org
Subject: Re: man-pages-6.14 released

Hi Carlos,

On Thu, Jun 26, 2025 at 04:41:16PM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> On 5/9/25 8:14 AM, Andries E. Brouwer wrote:
> > Hi Alejandro,
> > 
> > > > I wonder about the legal status of such a change.
> > > > There is ownership of the pages, and a license that allows
> > > > others to do certain things.
> > > 
> > > I also wonder about it.  We discussed it for several (~3) months, and I
> > > documented links to the discussion in the commit message:
> > > 
> > > commit 9f2986c34166085225bb5606ebfd4952054e1657
> > > Author: Alejandro Colomar <alx@...nel.org>
> > > Date:   Fri Apr 11 02:19:48 2025 +0200
> > > 
> > >      *, CREDITS: Unify copyright notices
> > >      Link: <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/jpin2dbnp5vpitnh7l4qmvkamzq3h3xljzsznrudgioox3nn72@57uybxbe3h4p/T/#u>
> > >      Link: <https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/copyright-notices-in-open-source-software-projects>
> > 
> > So I read this last link, and see
> > 
> > "Don’t change someone else’s copyright notice without their permission
> > You should not change or remove someone else’s copyright notice unless
> > they have expressly (in writing) permitted you to do so. This includes
> > third parties’ notices in pre-existing code."
> > 
> > The main topic of that link is how one should document new contributions,
> > and writing "by the contributors of the foo project" is OK for new stuff,
> > of course provided the new contributor agrees.
> > In my opinion it is illegal to change existing copyright notices,
> > unless you get permission from all people involved, which seems unlikely.
> 
> I agree with Andries.
> 
> This is also my interpretation, you cannot remove these entries without
> express permission from the copyright holder.

Well, we got express permission for a third of the copyright holders in
the last few months.  Also, we got no express notices in the contrary,
so around two thirds have remained silent.

We could restore those that haven't expressely granted permission...

The thing is, as someone else mentioned, removals happen also implicitly
by moving text from one page to another and not copying copyright
notices, so how much does it matter an intentional rewrite of the
copyright notices into a different form (but which keeps their
copyright, as part of the AUTHORS file), compared to an unintentional
removal of copyright by moving the text (these do actually remove
copyright, so these are the problematic ones).

By rewriting the copyright notices, we'd actually be honoring the
copyright, even when text is moved from page to page.  I think that is
more important.  And since all explicit notices have granted us
permission, even if some have remained silent (in some cases, their
email probably isn't monitored anymore), I think we should go forward.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

> In glibc we did not remove any copyright notices, but *added* under DCO
> "Copyright, The GNU Toolchain authors."
> 
> Example:
>    1 /* Map in a shared object's segments from the file.
>    2    Copyright (C) 1995-2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>    3    Copyright The GNU Toolchain Authors.
>    4    This file is part of the GNU C Library.
>    ...
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> Carlos.
> 
> 

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

Download attachment "signature.asc" of type "application/pgp-signature" (834 bytes)

Powered by blists - more mailing lists