Open Stack

On Fri, 2013-05-17 at 19:45 +0200, Zane Bitter wrote:
> On 17/05/13 17:48, Clint Byrum wrote:
> > Excerpts from Russell Bryant's message of 2013-05-17 07:23:08 -0700:
> >> >On 05/17/2013 10:07 AM, Brian Lamar wrote:
> >>> > >I'm genuinely curious why your first preference is for complete copyright headers after it's been determined they're not needed to preserve copyright. Can you expound on that? Perhaps I'm misinterpreting markwash's statements.
> >> >
> >> >Because it gives some people warm fuzzies, and there's some value in
> >> >that.  The chance for recognition in public helps drive open source
> >> >contributions.  It also seems to be the norm.  It's done all over the
> >> >place, so I'm just used to it.
> >> >
> >> >Admittedly that view seems outdated, though.  Since git maintains
> >> >history of commit authors, the headers seem to have more value for a
> >> >project using a a system like svn with only a few committers and no
> >> >tracking of who wrote the code other than what you write in the commit
> >> >message and leave in copyright headers.
> >> >
> > Git does not follow the code through to tarballs and onto peoples'
> > systems.  Also git does not express copyright assignment. Much of the code
> > I write is work for hire for HP Cloud and thus they own the copyrights. To
> > look at git and determine that, one would have to know the dates of my
> > employment. This creates an ambiguity that a copyright notice does not.
> >
> > I understand that they get out of date. HP could sell the copyrights
> > to another company, and even though my code says "Copyright Hewlett
> > Packard Development Corporation" now it belongs to "Fictional Future
> > Corporation". However, this still provides a bread crumb for anyone
> > auditing the code to follow to HP, who can then make it clear they do
> > not own the rights and that they have transferred to FFC.
> 
> A NOTICE file _would_ follow the code through to tarballs &c. though, 
> and the Apache 2 license already requires it to be included when 
> distributing:
> 
>     (d) If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its
>         distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must
>         include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained
>         within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not
>         pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one
>         of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed
>         as part of the Derivative Works; ... [it goes on]
> 
> It seems to me that including a NOTICE file with any copyright 
> statements that contributors wish to add, plus a statement that the 
> OpenStack project is the source of the package, would deliver 90% of the 
> value while eliminating 99.9% of the absurdity of trying to maintain 
> copyright headers in every single file.

IMHO, a NOTICE file isn't so much about tracking copyright ownership as
it is about us ensuring credit is given.

Think about how you'd comply with the above clause in the context of an
OpenStack-based hardware appliance. Would it mean e.g. printed copy of
the NOTICE file?

We discussed this a bit here:

  http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/legal-discuss/2013-April/000014.html

But I wouldn't like to see us adopt NOTICE files *just* as a way to
track copyright ownership ... because it actually has wider
implications.

Cheers,
Mark.