December 2024

spec file copyright headers
by Andreas Stieger 27 Feb '25

27 Feb '25

Hello project, I would like to raise for open discussion the rpm spec copyright headers. Let's use the following as an entry example to see if we can find an general opinion or solution. This should not be considered escalation on the SR. systemd maintainer Franck declined my SR#1232931 [1] for boo#1234765 [2] with the following note: > Thanks. Can you please resubmit without changing the copyright ? > Allow me to lay out the following thoughts: openSUSE packages are licensed and … [View More]distributed under an OSI approved license. Changes to the package by another party create derivative works. That copyright is not owned exclusively by the original creator, the part that the contributor added is owned by them. Or, verbatim from the standard header: > # All modifications and additions to the file contributed by third parties > # remain the property of their copyright owners, unless otherwise agreed > # upon. Many packages contain "Copyright (c) {{ year }} SUSE LLC" . The vim .spec template, spec-cleaner and the corresponding source service update this regularly. They also update the copyright year to the current year unless the right parameters are passed, and even so if no people employed by SUSE LLC are involved. My original packages contain my own copyright. As a contributor I am happy to license my works to anyone, including SUSE LLC, under an open source license. What I am not doing is assign exclusive ownership to SUSE LLC, neither for my original packages nor for my contributions. I believe this is in the spirit of FLOSS. We should clarify the obvious: assigning exclusive copyright to SUSE LLC is not a requirement for contribution for openSUSE, the text makes that clear. But there is no single best way to reflect that, and who owns what, if "SUSE LLC" keeps getting added, automatically, at the top (!), while we reject contributors adding their own. You can reject such submissions, what what message are we sending to openSUSE contributors that are not bound to assign their work to the company? The following points may need to be part of the discussion: Should spec-cleaner/format_spec_file have a mode, default, for non-SUSE contributors? Specifically, do not add the SUSE LLC copyright or update it's year unless the contribution is done on behalf of SUSE LLC. There may be a triviality limit for what constitutes a copyrightable contribution to an rpm spec, given that many constructs are trivial, tool generated, or copied from another package, distribution, or the wiki. There may be bit of a stylistic problem of proliferation of copyright lines. Changing/removal of any lines not your own should be avoided. The spec header refers to the license of the upstream package. Upstream packages are known to change licenses. That means that in these cases the license of the spec file changes, but the copyright holder can do that. And in the case of a community contribution, that is not "SUSE LLC" exclusively. Re-licensing this is different from creating a derivative work under a compatible FLOSS license. Finally, I do not want to leave you without a specific proposal. Here it is: > # Copyright (C) YEAR openSUSE project and contributors, see package > changelog. > Not the best idea, but one that includes the outside contributors. Happy to discuss, Andreas [1] https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/1232931 [2] https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1234765 [View Less]

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Re: spec file copyright headers
by Patrick Fitzgerald 29 Dec '24

29 Dec '24

On 29/12/2024 16:20, Björn Bidar wrote: Patrick Fitzgerald <patrickf(a)i-layer.com> writes: some clarifications On 23/12/2024 11:21, Dominik George wrote: Hi, Many packages contain "Copyright (c) {{ year }} SUSE LLC" . The vim .spec template, spec-cleaner and the corresponding source service update this regularly. They also update the copyright year to the current year unless the right parameters are passed, and even so if no people employed by SUSE LLC are involved.… [View More] My original packages contain my own copyright. As a contributor I am happy to license my works to anyone, including SUSE LLC, under an open source license. What I am not doing is assign exclusive ownership to SUSE LLC, neither for my original packages nor for my contributions. I believe this is in the spirit of FLOSS. We should clarify the obvious: assigning exclusive copyright to SUSE LLC is not a requirement for contribution for openSUSE, the text makes that clear. But there is no single best way to reflect that, and who owns what, if "SUSE LLC" keeps getting added, automatically, at the top (!), while we reject contributors adding their own. You can reject such submissions, what what message are we sending to openSUSE contributors that are not bound to assign their work to the company? SUSE LLC being listed as sole copyright holder is one point stopping me from actively contributing or largely promoting openSUSE distributions (in addition to the project's insistance in promoting Google and Microsoft platforms). Also keep in mind that copyright assignment to a company, or replacing copyright holders with a company name, is outright illegal if the original author is a German citizen. -nik I doubt that "outright illegal" is true.. It depends on the agreements made between the original author and others - including companies. For example if you are employed by a company then you may need to check your employment contract - it may stipulated there that copyrighted works are automatically assigned. (Look to any music company to see that kind of behaviour.) A company/organisation possesses, legally speaking, the same rights as a person; they can be taxed, sued and bankrupted, so they can hold patents and copyrights. Having said that, yes, to transfer the copyright to /anyone - /without the permission of the original author, is mostly likely illegal. I say mostly, because it might be transferred in the case of bankruptcy of the owner because it is an asset. In any case it depends on agreements that have been reached. One thing to be aware of though, is that assigning copyright/patents/trademarks to "openSUSE" is pointless because at the moment, "openSUSE" is neither a person or a company/organisation. It is simply a trademark of SUSE, and has no legal status. This is why the Geeko Foundation exists - to provide a legal entity for the community to rally behind. Note this view is IMHO quite Brit/US centric. As a German I don't feel a organization outside of Europe could represent me as a developer/user. In the context of copyright it is also not helpful that these are to centered towards the angloamerican world. What the name openSUSE means as a brand seems to be also much different outside of Europe, but that's off-topic. I suspect that you wouldn't feel represented by any organisation outside of Germany? Indeed every country has its own copyright laws, though they are broadly similar in scope. But my point though is that assigning copyright to openSUSE (mentioned earlier in this thread) is pointless as "openSUSE" has no basis to "hold" copyright, as it is not a person or legal association, legally speaking. Anywhere in the world. Genuine question: when the UK was part of the EU, how would you have thought about this topic then? (just curious) Obviously a macro assigning a copyright to a third party is... questionable, unless there are is an agreement in place. (ie a checkbox on every build "by using OBS you agree to SUSE Inc being joint copyright holder") IMHO this process should be manual. The format_spec service should not override copyright but warn if there's no copyright and point the developer towards the wikit to change accordingly. Don't automate something which is better done in a manual process, copyright is one of these things. My point exactly re automation - I agree. But another genuine question, why is this better done manually? For my self I don't care much. However I would prefer to assign the copyright to SUSE GmbH than SUSE LLC. And what if as an independent developer you wanted to retain copyright yourself of something you have authored, but gets built by OBS? If possible the license specifiers and file-copyright-text should use SPDX tags. -- [View Less]

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Re: spec file copyright headers
by Andreas Stieger 27 Dec '24

27 Dec '24

On 2024-12-26 10:47, Franck Bui wrote: > On 12/24/24 15:34, Andreas Stieger wrote: >> I cannot speak about others. Let's speak about the general situation: SUSE LLC's >> copyright line is both added and updated upon every invocation of the source >> service (at least osc build), with or without any involvement of a SUSE person. >> What's good for SUSE should be good for everyone if they choose to do so like >> me, without filtering. > Again this behavior … [View More]

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Re: spec file copyright headers
by Andreas Stieger 24 Dec '24

24 Dec '24

On 2024-12-24 15:04, Franck Bui wrote: > On 12/24/24 14:22, Franck Bui wrote: >> On 12/24/24 13:27, Andreas Stieger wrote: >>> However do you think that stripping my copyright, and using a different >>> date with my name against is, is an accurate reflection? >> Well I'm not sure why you're complaining here. >> >> If this is because I removed the part where you replaced SUSE's copyright with > My mistake, you didn't replace SUSE's copyright but … [View More]

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[Notice] - openSUSE Regular Board election 2024 - Extension of nomination and Ballot periods.
by Ariez Vachha - openSUSE 16 Dec '24

16 Dec '24

Dear openSUSE members, openSUSE Board Election 2024 [1] As we have not received any nominations to date in accordance with our Election Rules [2] the ballot period will be extended by two weeks and the election schedule will be updated as below: ## Schedule ## Friday 15 November 2024 * Announcement for the Board Election 2024 * Call for nominations and applications for Board candidacy * Membership drive Saturday 14 December 2024 * Announcement of the final list of candidates * Campaign … [View More]

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Candidacy for Board Seat
by Jeff Mahoney 09 Dec '24

09 Dec '24

Hi folks - I saw the message today about there being no nominations for the open Board seats and am announcing my candidacy for one of the seats. I've been a member of the openSUSE project since the beginning and a SUSE/openSUSE user since the late 90s. I've been a SUSE employee for the past 24 years, starting as a kernel file system developer, and after a few title changes, now serve as VP of Engineering for Linux Systems. At the openSUSE Conference in Nuernberg this summer, we had … [View More]

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No more Leap feature meetings until the new year
by Lubos Kocman 09 Dec '24

09 Dec '24

Hello openSUSE! I'll be on vacation from the 13th Dec, so I'm cancelling the remaining feature review meetings until the end of the year. The next feature meeting will be on 6th January. If you give yourself "submit more packages to Leap 16.0" as a new years resolution, and there is a chance these packages would require package updates on SLES side, please make sure to report these https://code.opensuse.org/leap/features/issues as soon as possible. SLES 16 is still in its Alpha phase, and it'… [View More]

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Board meeting minutes 2024-11-11
by Neal Gompa 09 Dec '24

09 Dec '24

Archive link: https://en.opensuse.org/Archive:Board_meeting_2024-11-11 = Board Meeting Monday 2024-11-11 14:00 CET = * Present: Doug, Gerald, Neal, Patrick * Excused: Shawn, Simon * Guest: Lubos * Minutes: Neal == SUSE Hackweek 24 (non-availability next week) == * https://hackweek.opensuse.org/ . * Lubos suggest to cancel meetings at calendar-o-o * Those who want to participate might want to have a look at projects tagged with an opensuse tag ** https://hackweek.opensuse.org/24/topics/… [View More]

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Board meeting minutes 2024-08-19
by Neal Gompa 09 Dec '24

09 Dec '24

Hey folks, sorry for this being late, lots of things got in the way... It's also up here: https://en.opensuse.org/Archive:Board_meeting_2024-08-19 = Board Meeting Monday 2024-08-19 14:00 CEST = * Present: Doug, Gerald, Neal, Patrick, Simon * Excused: Shawn * Notes: Neal == Discussion of finalizing and sending previous meetings minutes == == openSUSE.Asia Summit == SUSE's keynote will be represented by - Nakao san Doug wrote organizers about being more than happy consolidating two talks by … [View More]

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Board meeting minutes 2024-11-25
by Douglas DeMaio 09 Dec '24

09 Dec '24

= Board Meeting Monday 2024-11-25 14:00 CEST = * Present: Doug, Gerald, Neal, Simon * Excused: Shawn, Patrick * Guest: * Minutes: Doug == Elections == Had update about status of those expressing interest in running for the board == Provided Geeko Update == Provided an update on TSP and some challenges the foundation has been experiencing with bank transfers Meeting ends 14:32.

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