Re: BK MetaData License Problem?

Marek Habersack
2002-10-06T19:05:46Z

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1895 bytes --]

On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 06:26:18PM +0200, Manfred Spraul scribbled:
[snip]
> Marek Habersack wrote:
> >
> >Perhaps I am being silly at the moment, but wouldn't it suffice in this
> >case
> >to put a statement in your commit message (I believe it can be automated)
> >stating that this message and the comitted data are licensed under the GPL?
> >
>
> For example.
> Or a sentence in the Licensing file, or whatever.("If you want to
> contribute to the development at www.kernel.org, then you must agree to
> the following conditions: You name will be used, your commit text will
> be used, your mail address will be published etc." No GPL conflict, you
> are free to fork)
I don't think that would suffice in this case. The problem is not in your or
anybody else's consent to the terms of GPL, but that the BK license doesn't
make it clear (as I understand) as to what is the legal status of the
metadata - i.e. what's the license that pertains to it. Also, this is not
BitMover's problem actually - thus the user, developer, would have to take
care to make a clear statement as to what the changelog license is. Or,
perhaps, BitMover could add to the license that the any software (i.e.
source code, documentation, log messages etc.) are accepted under the same
license as the, say, whole repository for the software unless otherwise
stated. Then only one file in the repository would suffice to make the
situation clear - it might be even done in a way that the bk tools display
the contents of this file (let's call it a "banner") once per "session" (by
default, of course) - to ascertain that anybody using the repository will
(or may) see the contents of the file. Maybe I'm rambling :), but that looks
like a sane solution to me (not being the BK user and not even liking it, I
don't know whether such a "motd" file is possible).

regards,

marek

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]