[pacman-dev] Time for changes

[Aaron Griffin]

On 10/4/06, Douglas Andrade <dsandrade at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/4/06, Essien Ita Essien <essiene at datavibe.net> wrote:
> > IMOHO, Aaron, since you're right now incharge of the project, pick one
> > Method and lets us live with it and move on to getting pacman out the
> > door, its been waaaay too long in development already i think (though
> > the method you pick does not have to be the one you really like,
> > considering the work vmiklos and co have done, in the end, both methods
> > work, various projects use either).
>
> +1. I could not say anything better, i make our words mine.

Well, here's the way I see it.  As with anything copyrighted, one can
hold the copyright without being a direct author of a given chunk of
code.  This is deemed a "contribution" of code to the original
copyright author.

Since 2002 Judd has held, under the GPL, the copyright for pacman,
regardless of changes.

I believe it's viable for contributing authors to copyright their work
as well.  I feel that it's far more direct to copyright the entire
program to judd by default (yes, from 2002 as it is based on the
original pacman).   Sure additional copyright info can be added, but
judd should remain in place.

As for the rationale of people commenting on me bringing this up.
Regardless of _why_ you use free software, the protections given by
the FSF and the GPL are VITAL.  As for why this was brought up when
development has been delayed so long - I have received a 34 thousand
line diff file, of which a large chunk is copyright changes.  I doubt
anyone would feel comfortable simpl applying to 34 thousand line patch
without thinking to _any_ code, let alone code they're supposed to be
responsible for.  One can claim it's easy to "just fix it", but
honestly, it's just tedious and not inherantly easy.

As for the claim that CVS is invalid, I am going to claim that, at
this point, it is not. pacman 3 is a "derivative work" based on the
original pacman.  The copyright from 2002 still holds.  I will not be
revoking Judd's copyright, as I believe that is improper.