linux-kernel - Re: man-pages-6.14 released

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Message-ID: <42dad79f-e0f2-4731-ac14-0189f5d278a0@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2025 19:01:24 -0400
From: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@...hat.com>
To: Alejandro Colomar <alx@...nel.org>
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

On 6/26/25 5:04 PM, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> 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.

You should track down the copyright holders and get written approval,
or restore the copyright notices.

This is exactly the difficulty in maintaining such written notices.

And why they are no longer recommended.

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

Yes please.

May I suggest doing a new release with the copyrights restored?

> 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).

Both are legally mistakes.

The common utterance is "As compliance approaches 100% cost approaches
infinity" :-)

However, you should not deny anyone the right to have their copyright
directly noted in the file, but you can encourage the generic use of
"Copyright the Foo Authors." You can deny the contribution entirely if
you wish on grounds that maintaining copyright statements is too much
work.

> 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.

I agree, but you need permission from the authors.

I disagree that man-pages should go forward with the current changes.

May you please restore the copyright notices and cut a new release?

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.