[packman] New packages for packman (Walter Fey)

[Richard Brown]

On Thu 3. Aug 2017 at 02:01, Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser at opensuse.org>
wrote:

> 2017-08-01 18:02 GMT+02:00 Richard Brown <RBrownCCB at opensuse.org>:
> > On Tue 1. Aug 2017 at 15:33, Luigi Baldoni <aloisio at gmx.com> wrote:
> [...]
> >> If so I suspect it's related to the missing header with copyright
> >> attribution to SUSE AG.
> >>
> >> Now, the question is: would Packman be ok with that?
> >
> > I would hope the answer is "no"
>
> It seems to me that the conflict here comes from a different
> interpretation of how things happened.
> I might be wrong but from what I've read, I'm under the impression that
> - Walter says that he has maintained those spec files since years and,
> hence, he is the copyright holder on the spec files, and in that case,
> there would be no problem building and hosting them at Packman (*)
> - Richard says that he took bits of spec files that were not his
> copyright and/or had the copyright attribution to SUSE, and removed
> those in the process
> Maybe Walter means that he solely wants to base his packages in
> Packman on his very own spec files.
>
> (*) that being said...
> I'm in no position to influence anything as I've pretty much retired
> from everything, but as probably everyone knows, I have maintained a
> lot of packages at Packman in the past, for quite a while.
> Based on that experience, my personal opinion is that hamradio
> packages have absolutely nothing to do on Packman.
> MPlayer yes, hamradio? no. That is really not the purpose of Packman.
> It's not a dissidence from the openSUSE project (even though it was a
> bit of that in the olden days, before the openSUSE project started
> :)), it's a complementary (and important) service to its community.
>
> Is there maybe a way to resolve what seems to be a misunderstanding
> (or misrepresentation of events), and keep those packages on the
> openSUSE OBS ? (even though the tone of discourse makes it seem as if
> it's already too late for that..)


Walter is totally free to host whatever he wants on OBS as long as he
complies with the documented rules, which require copyright headers. He has
received extensive guidance that clarifies that, for those specfiles 100%
of his own work, he could/should assert his own copyright in that header.
For those where the specfiles contains lines taken from the collaboration
with hardware/sdr, the copyright header should include attribution to the
copyright holder of the hardware/sdr specfiles.

At no point was Walter banned, forbidden, or otherwise censored from OBS,
but we try to make it very clear what the acceptable behaviour is in
regards to software licenses and copyright.

The fact that he seems to want to move his work to Packman therefore
concerns me that he intends to do so in a way that OBS would deem
unacceptable. I consider this as much of a risk to Packman as it was to
OBS, and think it's important to highlight the problems associated with
that. I did not intend to come off as "threatening" and wish to apologise
for that - I thought my choice of language made it clear that I respect
Packmans independence as a project, but at the same time I feel the
responsible thing is to show the legal risks involved.


> > If Packman receives packages which clearly remove the legal copyright
> > attribution of previous authors, Packman would need to be prepared for
> > serious conversations with the copyright holder who's attributions are
> > being removed.
> > This is a very serious situation which fundamentally undermines the legal
> > basis under which free and open source licenses operate, so is taken very
> > seriously by corporations that run their business in compliance with
> those
> > licenses.
>
> Richard, seriously, those gratuitous threats...
> Nothing happened, why are you throwing those around ? (including the
> bit in a latter post you made..)


Nothing happened with Packman, but they did in OBS. It was a long drawn out
discussion with Walter that took a lot of the Boards time and SUSEs legals
team time. As I already said above, I didn't intend for what I wrote to be
read as a threat, but it most certainly was intended as a warning, because
I wouldn't wish on any other human being a repeat of the work I've already
gone through on this issue.


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