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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-dev] Dealing with GitHub Pull Requests the easy way
From:       Greg KH <gregkh () gentoo ! org>
Date:       2016-10-28 13:37:02
Message-ID: 20161028133702.GA18130 () kroah ! com
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On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 05:08:13PM -0700, Daniel Campbell wrote:
> Forgive me, but I don't see why people have so much trouble with
> copyright wrt Gentoo. I've simply assumed anything I wrote for Gentoo
> would be attributed to me via git log information and/or metadata.xml
> and should I leave Gentoo, Gentoo keeps the rights to it since I'm
> contributing to it. Nothing stops me from pushing ebuilds to my personal
> overlay *and* the primary Gentoo tree.

Note, lots of people (i.e. almost anyone who is employed in the US), are
in the situation where the copyright ownership of your contributions are
not owned by yourself, so you can not give the copyright away to the
Gentoo Foundation without an explicit legal document from that owner
granting that copyright transfer (or additional ownership.)

So this is a real issue, and a problem, for many of our developers
(myself included), which is why many many years ago some of us worked to
get that copyright ownership document removed.

> With a DCO, it greatly complicates things. Would my right to keep my
> contributions in an overlay be infringed upon? What would change if we
> switch to this?

Nothing, it just explicitly calls out that you know the contribution you
are making is allowed and under the license of the file/project you are
contributing to.  It does not change the ownership of the copyright of
the contribution at all.  It's a very simple document, I think I've
written more words in this email than the whole document has, I suggest
reading it for all of the details.

thanks,

greg k-h

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