[aur-general] AUR & Copyright

[Michael Schubert]

> As long as the maintainer (aka copyright holder) are allowed to specify
their
> own license then I'd be fine with it, though.

Copyright holders are always allowed to publish their work under any
additional license. No issue there.

2011/2/10 Smartboy <smartboyathome at gmail.com>

> On 02/10/2011 04:25 AM, Michael Schubert wrote:
>
>> I think there is one issue most people are overlooking: licensing is *not*
>> the same as ownership. Ownership allows you to release your code under any
>> license you want and other users are able to use it under the terms of the
>> license. Do not make the error of wanting to transfer ownership instead of
>> just a license release.
>>
>> Also, I fully agree with Peter Lewis' sentiments 2 posts ago: it is dull,
>> but important to get right.
>>
>> Adding to that, a license on an individual PKGBUILD may not be enforcable
>> (since it is unlikely to reach the complexity threshold), however, given
>> the
>> vast amount of scripts in the AUR database as a whole, they will be. Thus
>> I
>> would propose an "uploads are licensed under [...]" next to the submit
>> button, which should sufficiently cover the issue.
>>
>> My general thoughts:
>> - PKGBUILDs should be freely distributable
>> - Attribution of the previous authors should be mandatory
>> - Commercial exploitation (i.e., using/modifying without giving anything
>> back) should not be possible
>>
>> These points are all covered by the GPL. Plus it would be simple since
>> most
>> of Arch is already under that license. BSD won't cover the third. Public
>> domain won't cover points 2 and 3. Thus, I think GPL would be the (only)
>> right choice.
>>
>>
>> 2011/2/10 Xyne<xyne at archlinux.ca>
>>
>>  On 2011-02-07 09:13 -0200 (06:1)
>>> Bernardo Barros wrote:
>>>
>>>  2011/2/6 Ray Rashif<schiv at archlinux.org>:
>>>>
>>>>> # Copyright 1999-2011 Gentoo Foundation
>>>>> # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
>>>>>
>>>> But Arch is a legal entity? Can we put "Arch" as the copyright holder?
>>>>
>>> That would make it possible for Arch to prevent packagers from
>>> distributing
>>> their own packages. It would almost certainly never happen, but naive
>>> optimism
>>> is a bad thing. I have seen OSS projects sell out to corporations before.
>>>
>>> That's also why I remove the "or any later version" clause from anything
>>> that I
>>> release under the GPL. No one can guarantee that there will never be a
>>> major
>>> loophole in a future version, or that all future versions will be in the
>>> same
>>> spirit.
>>>
>>>  What I do not like about the GPL is that it forces people to republish
> derivative works under the GPL license, rather than under another license.
> As long as the maintainer (aka copyright holder) are allowed to specify
> their own license then I'd be fine with it, though.
>
> Smartboy
>