[Savannah-hackers] Re: [Gforge-devel] gforge

[Tim Perdue]

Mathieu Roy wrote:
> Tim Perdue <address@hidden> said:
>
>
> > Matheiu, please see the attached message at the
> > bottom. address@hidden was contacted about this 6-7 weeks ago with
> > no response.
> >
> > As far as CVS, we have no problem moving it off of savannah if it's a
> > problem.
>
>
> The first point (licensing/copyright notes missing) is a problem in
> any way, it should be considered as a problem also outside
> Savannah. Basically, files without these are not clearly covered by
> the licenses picked, someone could argue on this in trial.
> It's an issue in any case, but if you're not hosted by Savannah -which
> cares about protecting software freedom it hosts- it's up to you. 
>
> Second point, if you link a proprietary software against gforge, as
> gforge is currently partly GPL, it's a license violation inside and 
> outside Savannah. 
>
> Thoses problems are not in fact really Savannah-specific. They cannot
> simply vanish by removing gforge from the Savannah CVS.

Yes, I was hoping we could get some good advice on bringing all 
copyright issues up to 100% standard form. I have been told that a mixed 
copyright is "harder to defend".

It's not clear to me how you handle the files which are both VA 
Linux/Other copyright, and how to systematically eliminate all the VA 
Linux stuff without it poisoning the whole package with a mixed copyright.

Some people have said to remove all VA Linux copyrights in the headers, 
but I don't see how you can do that, when indeed they are copyrighted by VA.

The VA-copyrighted stuff accounts for < 20%. Probably 80% is rewritten 
and copyrighted by me and a handful of other people at this point.

Tim