From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Kastrup Subject: Re: A few contributor's questions Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:00:11 +0100 Message-ID: <87mwic2ijo.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <8738k44808.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <20140131161924.GA4332@google.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Cc: git@vger.kernel.org To: Jonathan Nieder X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Jan 31 18:00:20 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1W9HRz-00016Z-FJ for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:00:19 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932690AbaAaRAO (ORCPT ); Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:00:14 -0500 Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([208.118.235.10]:47609 "EHLO fencepost.gnu.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932263AbaAaRAN (ORCPT ); Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:00:13 -0500 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:46650 helo=lola) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W9HRs-00059I-Cd; Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:00:12 -0500 Received: by lola (Postfix, from userid 1000) id DBBEAE0521; Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:00:11 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: <20140131161924.GA4332@google.com> (Jonathan Nieder's message of "Fri, 31 Jan 2014 08:19:24 -0800") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Jonathan Nieder writes: > Also keep in mind that you don't need a copyright notice to own > copyright, that it would be crazy for someone to claim you've assigned > copyright on your changes without an explicit reassignment, Not at all crazy: Documentation/SubmittingPatches states that adding a "Signed-off-by:" footer to a commit among other things constitutes agreement to Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1 By making a contribution to this project, I certify that: (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I have the right to submit it under the open source license indicated in the file; or (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source license and I have the right under that license to submit that work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under the same open source license (unless I am permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated in the file; or The only relevant notice to licensing "indicated in the file" currently is "Copyright (c) 2006 by Junio Hamano". Also whether or not this implies an assignment of copyright, it is a reasonable assumption for people working with a copy of Git distributed by tar file or otherwise that a file with such a copyright notice only contains material copyrighted by Junio Hamano. So if I want to assert my copyright in the case of licensing breaches, the party in breach may claim estoppel by me "hiding" material copyrighted by myself in a file with such a notice. > and that libgit2's git.git-authors file that keeps coming up includes > a comment with a heuristic for delving into the history to find the > authors of some code. Sure. But that does not mean that this is the only means to "reasonably infer" the authorship of a file. > [...] >> Permissable-Licenses: GPL Version 2 or later > > Wouldn't a signed message on your website or some other public place > (e.g., the mailing list) do the trick? Legally? Sure. The whole point of such a notice in the commit message (or in some central file in the Git repository) is to save people the hassle of second-guessing or sleuthing for every single contribution. > Or a sentence in a commit message saying > > "I'd be happy to have these changes relicensed under the GPL version > 2 or later." > > sounds fine to me, at least. It's verbose and cumbersome enough that I would not have been surprised if there'd be an established way of getting this information on record, preferably per-project rather than per-commit. If it's going to be per-commit, a footer line would be less obtrusive than a whole sentence. But it would seem that there's no rule/standard here. Thanks -- David Kastrup