[packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On Wed 2. Aug 2017 at 09:26, Luigi Baldoni <aloisio at gmx.com> wrote:

> Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 at 10:08 AM
> From: martin at pluskal.org
> >
> > On Tue, 2017-08-01 at 21:41 +0200, Luigi Baldoni wrote:
> > > 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?
> >
> > As Richard explained, this might be a bit dangerous adventure for
> > packman. Apart from that I would say that motivation for moving to
> > packman is a bit weak - my understanding is that move is motivated by
> > hurt feelings after discussion about copyright attribution with OP, and
> > by his opposition against including hamradio/sdr stuff in Factory and
> > Leap.
>
> Before slandering anyone, now I see that packages in home:dl8fcl:hamradio
> have the following header:
>
> #
> # spec file for package foo
> #
> # Copyright (c) 2017 Walter Fey DL8FCL
> #
> # This file is under MIT license
>
> Is this the reeason why OBS doesn't want it? Would packman?
> Can Walter Fey confirm this?


The packages in OBS which the openSUSE Board objected to either

1) had no copyright attribution at all
Or
2) had copyright attribution which removed that claimed by other
contributors in versions of the specfile used by the package.

Your above example clearly would not be a repeat of scenario 1), but I
cannot comment to whether scenario 2) applies without a thorough audit of
the code and commit history involved.

I personally would consider 2) more concerning than 1) as 1) is a state
that all source files go through as they are being originally created. 2)
directly undermines the removed copyright holders ability to enforce the
license of their contributions. This is deeply concerning and toxic to the
smooth and legal operation of any open source project, especially one
distributing software.

If the package had no history (this is clearly not the case in this
situation, as Walter has already stated they're packages he formerly hosted
on OBS) then the above header certainly seems consistent with good
practice. But in this case the history of the package and the attribution
of all of the copyright holders involved in that history is the most
important factor to consider.


>
> > This would basically go against most of recent efforts to move
> > everything that is possible/allowed to OBS/Leap/Factory and would put
> > additional load on packman's resources, which are much more scarce than
> > those of OBS.
>
> And on that I fully agree. It seems to me trying to find a modus vivendi
> with OBS would be a much fruitful employment of everyone's time:)
>
> Regards
>
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