On Mon, Dec 23, 2024 at 4:16 AM Andreas Stieger <Andreas.Stieger@gmx.de> wrote:
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 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.
I completely agree about the situation with spec headers. When I wrote the openSUSE support for rust2rpm, I deliberately made it so that the copyright stanza used the output from "rpmdev-packager" by default, which ensured that this didn't happen. On my system, I ensure the format-spec and spec-cleaner OBS source services are not installed on my machine and I disallow source services running on check-in, because it would always add the SUSE copyright line. I would prefer to drop the year from the copyright stanza, since it has never been required, especially with packages that are maintained in version control. Copyright is automatic, the statements are principally informative, so the year isn't important. -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!