Name: : Benjamin Weber Email: shawk@gmx.net Areas of responsibility: kernel external patchsets Mentor: iggy Began probationary period: 7 Dec 03 ends 21 Dec 03
Guys, can you do the quiz at http://dev.gentoo.org/~avenj/quiz and email the answers to recruiters@gentoo Please note, the quiz is not a closed book exam but rather exists to encourage you to find some answers. In which case, you are free to ask questions. Also, if you come to irc, please get in touch with spyderous, seemant or avenj to get irc voice in #gentoo-dev channel and introduce yourselves.
Iggy, what's his status? Haven't gotten a quiz etc on him yet. Thanks!
His status, as in me, is that I have submitted my quiz ages ago. To my knowledge it was fine. The problem is, that I do not want to sign a copyright agreement that takes copyright + ownership from me. Copyright you can have, but I am not cool with ownership. I don't mind closing this bug for now if there is still no news on the copyright stuff. Iggy, feel free to comment.
I think you misunderstand fundamental copyright issues. "Copyright" _is_ "ownership" in an intellectual property sense. They're synonymous terms in this context. Copyright works like this: according to the Berne Convention, when you write a copyrightable quantity of work you are automatically the copyright owner for that work. You can then place a license on that work (the GNU GPL, for example) giving other people the right to use it under certain conditions. For Gentoo to be legally protected, we must be the copyright owner for all intellectual property in Gentoo. The copyright assignment agreement states that you assign copyright ownership of anything contributed to Gentoo to us and in return we agree to never change the license to anything materially different from the GPL. This is all explained at http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/copyright/index.xml If you do not want to sign over copyright ownership to Gentoo, we can't accept you as a developer. Up to you.
From your viewpoint this might be correct. But its not the issue at hand. As long as I hold the ownership, I can give or take the copyright (bound by possible contracts of course). The reason the copyright agreement was put into place was for you to be able to defend yourself if legal issues crop up. For this you do not need the ownership, though. If you want that as well, then you also want something different from what you claim the copyright agreement is for. I am the author of all code I write, and I want to retain the ownership of everything I create this way. As I fear that we will come to no understanding there, I have to refuse the offer of becoming a developer. I will continue to be an enthusiastic Gentooist though, since I personally view it as the best Distro out there. And I am sure it will stay that way, even without me being able to give something back right now. Maybe another time though. Keep up the good work!
alright thanks shawk, maybe some other time
