[packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Luigi Baldoni]

Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 10:30 PM
From: "Richard Brown" <RBrownCCB at opensuse.org>
> > On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 20:42, Luigi Baldoni <aloisio at gmx.com[mailto:aloisio at gmx.com]> wrote:Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 6:02 PM
> > 
> > No. I was talking about the copyring attribution for the spec file itself, with which I seem to recall
> > from a previous interaction OP has a problem with.
> >
> > Now, I assume that a commercial entity like SUSE can't afford to distribute anything where the IP is not
> > clearly defined, even for a mere script.
> > 
> > Would Packman be more lenient in that regard?
> 
> I don't know if Packman would be lenient or not in the scenario you pose, but that isn't relevant to the actual risk with Mr. Feys proposed comtributions.
> 
> The behaviour with Walter alludes to in his post was a clear, demonstrable case of Mr. Fey taking sources (in this case spec files) and reusing the spec file, in whole
> or in part, while simultaneously removing the copyright header from those spec files.
>  
> The spec files were all licensed under licenses such as the GPL and MIT which require all copyright attribution to be preserved as part of the license for reuse and
> redistribution.
>  
> Mr. Feys insistence to remove the copyright attribution while reusing source which clearly derived from clearly attributed specfiles is a clear breach of the licenses
> involved and in the interest of the copyright holders, the upstream projects who chose the licenses in use, and all open source projects the openSUSE Board requested 
> Mr Fey cease that behaviour.
> 
> Mr Fey now seems to seek to use Packman and his posts imply he might intend to do so in the same manner in which he chose to use the openSUSE Build service.
>  
> If that is the case, this could be a serious issue for the Packman build service. If the sources involved include files derived from those copyrighted to SUSE Linux 
> GmbH it is likely that SUSE will notice (after all, I have read this thread) and it is certainly likely we will be compelled to take action to protect our copyright 
> and the redistribution license of the packages in question.
 
> And that's a situation I really, sincerely hope we can avoid so hope that Packman has suitable processes and options in place to ensure the licenses and copyrights of
> their contributions are as checked as they reasonably can be before hosting and redistributing the resulting binaries.

I didn't say anything of the sort and I'm sorry if I gave that impression.

In my understanding (and I could be wrong), Walter Fey opposes copyright headers for spec files even
when he's the original author.

Hence my perplexity.

Now, I don't know if you know more about whatever happened on OBS or if the specfile skeleton itself is subject
to copyright, but it would be useful to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

Regards