[pacman-dev] Time for changes

[Roman Kyrylych]

2006/10/5, VMiklos <vmiklos at frugalware.org>:
> On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 10:22:34AM -0700, Judd Vinet <jvinet at zeroflux.org> wrote:
> okay, so you would like to have the same header for each file and your
> copyright from 2002 to 2006. what about the follwong:
>
> /* foo.c - This file is part of Pacman, see the COPYRIGHT file for more
>  * information */
>
> then all the names could be listed there

I don't think this will be better than one copyright holder. But
anyway I don't have the right nor power to impose my mind.

>
> > But if the day comes where a big decisions needs to be made that only
> > the copyright holder can make, I wouldn't want to be bogged down by a
> > game of who-wrote-what -- I think that could tear the project apart.
>
> if there are several authors, then the license can be changed to an
> other one in case all the copyright holders agree about the change,
> which is almost impossible. currently (yes, of course i really hope this
> will never happen :) ) if you go crazy and change the license, then you
> can do it, so the license of my own code is not guarantated. i hope you
> can see the problem

I don't see the problem. You can always take latest GPL version and make a fork.
Or you just don't want that somebody can use your code under different
license, not approved by you?

> > Again, I think the lack of Linus' name on some files is due to the
> > crazy modularity of the kernel.
>
> hopefully we will have backends other than 'files' and then we'll have
> crazy modules, too :)

Modules with different copyright holder are not a problem because they
are not vital part of Pacman. One module can be replaced by another or
just rewritten from scratch. I don't think that there will be many
modules ever, or they will be too complex to rewrite if needed.

> so, i don't plan to revert the copyright updates in our tree, but in
> case something is changed in the cvs (somehow we're listed as copyright
> holders) then of course i'll pull that change and drop our copyright
> fixes. and again, this whole "copyright thingy" from my part is about to
> be able to control under what license is my code distributed, not about
> hurting you in any way

Wouldn't it be strange that there will exist two very similar
_branches_ of one software but with different copyright notices? ;-) I
don't remember such case in OSS history yet. :-D

-- 
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)