Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com> wrote on 05/14/2013 02:50:31 PM:
On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 01:53:19PM -0500, Mark Brown wrote:
In several cases, the provenance of individual files was being investigated, and per-file copyright statements were an important part of that.
In the case of OpenStack, like many other modern projects, the most accurate file provenance record would seem to be the git commit history. That does not necessarily tell you anything conclusive about copyright ownership, but it is a better record to go by than examining copyright notices in source files (which, as noted, could well be, or become, inaccurate).
Ah, but when files are taken from this project and used in another (non-Stack) work, they become out-of-context from your git.
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.
This honestly seems way too trivial to be a Foundation-level issue (I assume by that you mean something that requires a Board decision?). (Again, for clarification, I am not taking a particular stance on the issue being discussed here.)
Mostly, I wanted to suggest that a lawyer needs to advise us on this. The Foundation is our go-to place for legal help, is it not? Mark Brown