- legal-discuss - lists.openstack.org

Re: [legal-discuss] [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files
by Mark Brown 15 May '13

15 May '13

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 09:56:17AM -0700, Mark Washenberger wrote: > > Unless anyone has a stronger counterpoint to the view Richard has expressed > > here, I'd like to proceed with plans to stop allowing commits that add new > > copyright headers to new file additions in Glance (LICENSE file isan obvious > > exception). > > Just a clarification, I wasn't taking any position on the issue, but > rather countering what appeared to be a strongly-held position that > seemed to rest on some legal assumptions. > > There could be other reasons to favor placement of copyright notices > in each file. I see that y'all have talked about this back and forth a bit - and I agree that per-file copyright can contain some headaches. However, I have had some very *practical* experience in this area; I was at one time directly involved in a major lawsuit surrounding open source, copyright and licensing (see my email address & your first guess will probably be correct). In several cases, the provenance of individual files was being investigated, and per-file copyright statements were an important part of that. IANAL, but I heartily suggest that this topic be brought up at the Foundation level, before we put anything into effect at the Project level. Mark Brown

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Copyright statements in _empty_ files
by David Ripton 15 May '13

15 May '13

I'm not generally advocating removing copyright statements from source files. If the author(s) put them in, then it's (at least) rude to take them out without permission, and getting permission from thousands of contributors would be a pain. But there's one particular case that drives me nuts. We have source code files that contain _only_ a copyright statement, and no actual content to assert copyright over. (I'm not talking about NOTICE files that exist to hold copyright statements; I'm talking about zero-byte __init__.py files that exist to mark a directory as a Python package.) You can't copyright a zero-byte file; there's no original creative content there. And, because the copyright blurb makes the file's size nonzero, people waste time reading it to look for code. Anyone object to me emptying source files that contain no code, just copyright statements and boilerplate vim/emacs comments? -- David Ripton Red Hat dripton(a)redhat.com

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[Fwd: Re: [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files]
by Mark McLoughlin 03 May '13

03 May '13

Wow, interesting - people including copyright notices in blueprints Cheers, Mark. -------- Forwarded Message -------- > From: Russell Bryant <rbryant(a)redhat.com> > To: Monty Taylor <mordred(a)inaugust.com> > Cc: openstack-tc(a)lists.openstack.org > Subject: Re: [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source > files > Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 18:55:38 -0400 > > On 05/01/2013 06:12 PM, Monty Taylor wrote: > > > > > > On 05/01/2013 06:05 PM, John Griffith wrote: > >> > >> > >> > >> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Mark Washenberger > >> <mark.washenberger(a)markwash.net <mailto:mark.washenberger@markwash.net>> > >> wrote: > >> > >> Hi folks, > >> > >> I was looking into the ASL-2.0, and chanced across the fact that in > >> Apache projects, they require that source files only have the > >> License Header, and may not have any copyright notices [1]. It > >> occurred to me that we waste a fair amount of time on copyrights in > >> license headers, and it would be nice not to have to do that anymore. > > > > I would like to hear more about the time waste there - where are we > > spending time? Can we do something to make that better? > > > >> I think that only applies to code submitted directly to ASF, but > >> regardless you wouldn't get any objections from me regarding your > >> proposal. Some of the legal teams in companies involved in OpenStack > >> however may feel differently. > > > > And some of the developers. I would not like that. > > > > I would really like to see more folks learn about appropriate addition > > of copyright attribution when they work on a file, because I think it's > > quite important. Don't think that removing attribution from each file > > would prevent people from needing to do it - if we moved to a NOTICE > > file system, they'd need to put the notice there. > > +1 > > > I also think that it's important that the attribution be per-file and > > not just in a NOTICE file, because the world has moved on from the days > > when tarballs were the primary mechanism of source code distribution. We > > publish this all on the web now. So this: > > > > https://github.com/openstack-dev/pbr/blob/master/pbr/packaging.py > > > > without per-file attribution, would not indicate who the license > > associated with this file was from. > > > >> I'm actually more troubled by seeing folks put copyright headers on > >> blueprints. > > > > Fascinating. I wonder if they realize that they're just asserting > > copyright on the text of the blueprint itself... > > It's quite irritating. It's not clear at all what the intention is. > Here are some examples: > > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/accurate-capacity-of-clusters-f… > > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/deploy-vcenter-templates-from-v… > > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/esx-resource-pools-as-compute-n… > > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/multiple-clusters-managed-by-on… > > I emailed the submitted and asked for clarification on the intent, but > haven't heard anything back. > > Monty, since the ones I've noticed are from HP, perhaps this is > something you can help track down? > > >> I also noticed a previous conversation [2] on this subject. I have > >> not found any policy that actually requires us to include copyrights > >> with each source file license header. > >> > >> Feel free to suggest that this is more trouble than it is worth, but > >> I'd like to propose that we discourage new contributions from > >> including copyright attribution, and provide a process to work with > >> the various parties we have to remove the copyrights from existing > >> files. Somewhere along the line, somebody (maybe even me!) could > >> write some appropriate hooks to ensure the (now identical) license > >> header is present in every file for every submission. > >> > >> Also, feel free to suggest that I'm plain wrong and am still wet > >> behind the ears--I won't be terribly surprised! > >> > >> [1] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#headers > >> [2] > >> http://markmail.org/message/eawha7pjiqoslm66?q=openstack+license+source+hea… > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> OpenStack-TC mailing list > >> OpenStack-TC(a)lists.openstack.org > >> <mailto:OpenStack-TC@lists.openstack.org> > >> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-tc > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> OpenStack-TC mailing list > >> OpenStack-TC(a)lists.openstack.org > >> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-tc > >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > > OpenStack-TC mailing list > > OpenStack-TC(a)lists.openstack.org > > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-tc > > > > > -- > Russell Bryant > > _______________________________________________ > OpenStack-TC mailing list > OpenStack-TC(a)lists.openstack.org > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-tc

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Fwd: [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files
by Mark Washenberger 02 May '13

02 May '13

:-( Apparently I'm not doing so great at reply-to-list these days ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark Washenberger <mark.washenberger(a)markwash.net> Date: Thu, May 2, 2013 at 12:33 AM Subject: Re: [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files To: Mark McLoughlin <markmc(a)redhat.com> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 10:53 PM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc(a)redhat.com> wrote: > Hi Mark, > > On Wed, 2013-05-01 at 14:57 -0700, Mark Washenberger wrote: > > Hi folks, > > > > I was looking into the ASL-2.0, and chanced across the fact that in > Apache > > projects, they require that source files only have the License Header, > and > > may not have any copyright notices [1]. It occurred to me that we waste a > > fair amount of time on copyrights in license headers, and it would be > nice > > not to have to do that anymore. > > Like Monty said, I'd like to hear more about why these are seen as a > time sink. > I'm having a difficult time providing hard numbers for you. I think one way to check for this would be to grep gerrit review notes, but I don't know how to do that. But in a non-exhaustive search, I can see some examples https://review.openstack.org/#/c/27001/ -> headers were missing from empty files, caught in review (eventually) https://review.openstack.org/#/c/23044/ -> copyright had wrong year (caught in review) https://review.openstack.org/#/c/22742/ -> just my fault, but I misunderstood the copyright policy and got someone to change to "Openstack Foundation" from their company https://review.openstack.org/#/c/20927/ -> wrong year (caught in review) https://review.openstack.org/#/c/20926/ -> wrong year (caught in review) https://review.openstack.org/#/c/20925/ -> wrong year (caught in review) https://review.openstack.org/#/c/20914 -> should be "Foundation" not "LLC", not caught in review https://review.openstack.org/#/c/21130 -> s/LLC/Foundation/ not caught in review I found these by manually inspecting only the latest 13 results I got when I searched for commits in glance that add files. >From this data, I think its clear that coders are making mistakes about licensing/copyright headers, and reviewers are having to pause to think about the correctness of those headers. While the amount of effort here isn't necessarily very large, I'd like to draw your attention to the amount of effort that it probably should be: 0. In proportional terms, we're pretty far away from ideal :-) > > > I also noticed a previous conversation [2] on this subject. I have not > > found any policy that actually requires us to include copyrights with > each > > source file license header. > > > > Feel free to suggest that this is more trouble than it is worth, but I'd > > like to propose that we discourage new contributions from including > > copyright attribution, and provide a process to work with the various > > parties we have to remove the copyrights from existing files. > > I don't have a massively strong opinion on this and I'd never really > considered the possibility of not having copyright headers, but my first > thought is that I like that we have them. I like that "ownership" of the > work is distributed and it's nice to be able to see how that ownership > is distributed through the code base. > I'd never considered it either, until I found out that Apache Software Foundation projects are explicitly required to *not* put copyright headers in their source files (they do, however, retain license headers). I realize that rule doesn't apply to us, but if it's good enough for ASF, how are we different? I'd also contend that the view of ownership you get from looking at copyright headers is pretty inaccurate. For example (again from Glance), $ git grep -i rackspace | grep -i copyright | wc -l 0 > > In any case, I think it's too late for us to effectively make a change > in like this successfully and not worth the hassle. > I would agree if I thought that such a change required any of the following: 1) changing existing copyright headers 2) changing the CLA 3) changing bylaws But I don't think those are needed. If we simply said "stop adding copyright headers", then I believe I could write a flake8 hacking rule to check for correct license headers (sans copyright) on new files. That would be enough for me, because my goal here is for people to not have to think about such headers during future development and review.

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Guidelines for naming new projects
by Mark McLoughlin 02 May '13

02 May '13

Hi I've just added a new question to the FAQ: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/LegalIssuesFAQ Q: What sort of things should I bear in mind when choosing a new project name, in order to reduce the risk of running into legal problems in the future? But I don't have an answer! I understand we can't cover all bases here. I understand that general guidelines can't replace a full conflict search by counsel. However, there are plenty of examples of why a general question to this would help developers avoid making obvious mistakes. And we're likely to just see more and more new project names, so we can't have the answer be "ask Mr Name Expert whether the name is sane". Without using any of our current project names as examples, would anyone care to take a stab at answering this generally? Thanks, Mark.

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Re: [legal-discuss] [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files
by Mark McLoughlin 02 May '13

02 May '13

On Thu, 2013-05-02 at 07:30 -0400, Sean Dague wrote: > On 05/01/2013 06:12 PM, Monty Taylor wrote: > > On 05/01/2013 06:05 PM, John Griffith wrote: > >> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Mark Washenberger > >> <mark.washenberger(a)markwash.net <mailto:mark.washenberger@markwash.net>> > >> wrote: > >> > >> Hi folks, > >> > >> I was looking into the ASL-2.0, and chanced across the fact that in > >> Apache projects, they require that source files only have the > >> License Header, and may not have any copyright notices [1]. It > >> occurred to me that we waste a fair amount of time on copyrights in > >> license headers, and it would be nice not to have to do that anymore. > > > > I would like to hear more about the time waste there - where are we > > spending time? Can we do something to make that better? > > > >> I think that only applies to code submitted directly to ASF, but > >> regardless you wouldn't get any objections from me regarding your > >> proposal. Some of the legal teams in companies involved in OpenStack > >> however may feel differently. > > > > And some of the developers. I would not like that. > > > > I would really like to see more folks learn about appropriate addition > > of copyright attribution when they work on a file, because I think it's > > quite important. Don't think that removing attribution from each file > > would prevent people from needing to do it - if we moved to a NOTICE > > file system, they'd need to put the notice there. > > +1 > > This is really an education issue. Lots of first time Open Source folks > on the project that don't understand that copyright + license grant in > each file is actually quite important to ensure things are actually Open > Source in all jurisdictions. > > It would be good if there was a single wiki page that I could respond to > people that -1 adding Copyright statements to explain that it is normal. > I've had to explain that too many times Let's get this on: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/LegalIssuesFAQ Cheers, Mark.

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Re: [legal-discuss] [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files
by Mark McLoughlin 01 May '13

01 May '13

Hi Mark, On Wed, 2013-05-01 at 14:57 -0700, Mark Washenberger wrote: > Hi folks, > > I was looking into the ASL-2.0, and chanced across the fact that in Apache > projects, they require that source files only have the License Header, and > may not have any copyright notices [1]. It occurred to me that we waste a > fair amount of time on copyrights in license headers, and it would be nice > not to have to do that anymore. Like Monty said, I'd like to hear more about why these are seen as a time sink. > I also noticed a previous conversation [2] on this subject. I have not > found any policy that actually requires us to include copyrights with each > source file license header. > > Feel free to suggest that this is more trouble than it is worth, but I'd > like to propose that we discourage new contributions from including > copyright attribution, and provide a process to work with the various > parties we have to remove the copyrights from existing files. I don't have a massively strong opinion on this and I'd never really considered the possibility of not having copyright headers, but my first thought is that I like that we have them. I like that "ownership" of the work is distributed and it's nice to be able to see how that ownership is distributed through the code base. In any case, I think it's too late for us to effectively make a change in like this successfully and not worth the hassle. Cheers, Mark.

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[Fwd: [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files]
by Mark McLoughlin 01 May '13

01 May '13

Hey Definitely a good topic for legal-discuss, I think. To catch on the thread to date, the archives are here: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-tc/2013-May/thread.html#215 Cheers, Mark. -------- Forwarded Message -------- > From: Mark Washenberger <mark.washenberger(a)markwash.net> > To: openstack-tc(a)lists.openstack.org > <openstack-tc(a)lists.openstack.org> > Subject: [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in source files > Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 14:57:45 -0700 > > Hi folks, > > > I was looking into the ASL-2.0, and chanced across the fact that in > Apache projects, they require that source files only have the License > Header, and may not have any copyright notices [1]. It occurred to me > that we waste a fair amount of time on copyrights in license headers, > and it would be nice not to have to do that anymore. > > > I also noticed a previous conversation [2] on this subject. I have not > found any policy that actually requires us to include copyrights with > each source file license header. > > > Feel free to suggest that this is more trouble than it is worth, but > I'd like to propose that we discourage new contributions from > including copyright attribution, and provide a process to work with > the various parties we have to remove the copyrights from existing > files. Somewhere along the line, somebody (maybe even me!) could write > some appropriate hooks to ensure the (now identical) license header is > present in every file for every submission. > > > Also, feel free to suggest that I'm plain wrong and am still wet > behind the ears--I won't be terribly surprised! > > > [1] http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#headers > [2] http://markmail.org/message/eawha7pjiqoslm66?q=openstack+license > +source+header > > _______________________________________________ > OpenStack-TC mailing list > OpenStack-TC(a)lists.openstack.org > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-tc

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Wiki pages
by Mark McLoughlin 30 Apr '13

30 Apr '13

Hey I've just taken a stab at starting a FAQ and a wiki page for the Legal Affairs Committee: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/LegalAffairsCommittee https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/LegalIssuesFAQ Edit at will! :) Cheers, Mark.

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Re: [legal-discuss] NOTICE files
by Monty Taylor 29 Apr '13

29 Apr '13

(Top posting. Phone. Sorry.) What if we were to generate a NOTICE file? We treat the got repo as the true source of record, and we put copyright attribution into each file. What if, same as AUTHORS and ChangeLog, we generate NOTICE at sdist time to include information collected from the individual files? Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote: >On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 10:50:56AM +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote: >> Hmm, so we had a case recently where we were considering incorporating >> (2 clause) BSD licensed code in a project: >> >> https://review.openstack.org/25531 >> >> What I wondered about was how to best comply (or rather, enable >> distributors of OpenStack in "binary form" to comply) with the second >> clause of the license: >> >> 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, >> this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation >> and/or other materials provided with the distribution. >> >> Do we just include that license (along with the copyright notice) in the >> project's LICENSE file? Does a NOTICE file serve do anything to help >> with this case? > >The two ways to deal with this are to include the license information >in the file incorporating the third-party code or to include it in >some global file. > >The ASF, as noted, is (or at least seems to be) using NOTICE files not >just for attribution but also for global collection of third-party >legal notices. Sphinx itself (just checking now) apparently uses its >global LICENSE file similarly to store third-party license notices. > >If one cares about theoretically making life as easy as possible for >downstream distributors of 'binary form' versions, I suppose this >global-legal-file approach is a preferable way to do that. The other >approach (putting, or retaining, a notice in the source file) is the >one I've tended to recommend (I suppose because it generally conveys >more information, and because I consider it the responsibility of the >downstream distributor to ensure that it is in compliance with all >licenses). There's no right or wrong answer, but a consistent approach >is a good idea. > >Sphinx uses notices in individual source files that point to the >global LICENSE file, which means if you're using excerpts of code from >a Sphinx file you'd have to do more work than you would if the actual >license text were already in the file, at least the way I see it. So >here it would have been just as much work to make sure the file(s) in >question had the 2-clause BSD license from Sphinx, as it would have >been to put the same information in a global LICENSE or NOTICE file. > >> > So the question raised by Dims boils down to whether OpenStack >> > projects should include an *OpenStack* attribution notice in top-level >> > NOTICE files. This would presumably be something analogous to standard >> > ASF attribution notices, like: >> > >> > This product includes software developed by >> > the OpenStack Foundation (http://www.openstack.org/) >> >> I'm not sure "developed by the OpenStack Foundation" rings true to >> me ... maybe "developed by the OpenStack project". The Foundation >> doesn't develop the code, it empowers/protects/promotes the project >> which develops the code. > >That was my intuition too (though from someone who's still really an >outside observer of OpenStack, so I wasn't sure I was right), and what >I was alluding to at the end of my message. By contrast, to most ASF >project developers, the wording of the ASF attribution notice >presumably rings true. > >> > But perhaps contributors to OpenStack projects feel >> > otherwise. In a project like OpenStack that does not aggregate >> > copyright ownership (and in which copyright ownership is getting >> > increasingly diverse), perhaps some perceive a value to having an >> > OpenStack-specific attribution notice. >> >> Yes, you could imagine a case would be made for it, but it would be a >> new departure for the project. I'd rather such a move to be made as a >> reaction to us feeling we're not getting credit for our work rather than >> a "the ASF does it, maybe we should too?" discussion. > >For a Red Hat perspective, FWIW, increasingly the Apache License 2.0 >is being used for projects initiated by or maintained principally by >Red Hat developers, but AFAICR we've thus far never used the NOTICE >file attribution mechanism. The one case I can think of where we've >considered adding it was for a project where the developers were >miffed at a downstream proprietary commercial derivative product >making significant reuse of the upstream code but apparently not >giving any credit. > > - RF > >_______________________________________________ >legal-discuss mailing list >legal-discuss(a)lists.openstack.org >http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss >

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