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Re: Code Headers - Copyright Assertions

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Re: Code Headers - Copyright Assertions

by
rvalyi@akretion.com
- 19/08/2016 16:57:16
Hello,

just a note to say that at Akretion we are happy with the current Copyright + author sections.
Now about the "contacting the author thing". Well often it's very useful for us the other developers. So for instance if I find an interesting module in the OCA that I want to depend on or refactor, I can quickly spot the guys to add as CC to review the PR; I can quickly evaluate a reputation of the module/code, all these social coding things that the simple author mention makes easy. So author should not be mandatory, but we welcome it very much.

My 2 cts.

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:38 AM, Daniel Reis <dgreis@sapo.pt> wrote:

IMO the copyright notice is needed for copyright reasons only, and is not necessarily the actual creator.
The code is is owned by someone, and can use it only because that someone licensed it to us.It is important to identify the copyright owner, because that is the main party of the licensing contract under which we are using the code.

As Eric stated, the copyright owner can be a company, and not the actual employee or subcontractor doing the work.
So, often it is not meaningful for contacting the author.

Also, I would ague that contacting the author should be discouraged.
Instead the current maintainers (whatever that means exactly) should be contacted through an open channel - an ML or GitHub.

My .02 old PTEs

Regards
Daniel

 

Citando Eric Caudal <eric.caudal@elico-corp.com>:

Anyway, what is important is that in the copyright header appears only copyright holders.

 

If they are individuals, company or sub-contractors with special agreement, etc. it doesnot matter for us. They will have to be able to justify it when somebody asks, that is all.

 

--
Eric Caudal [Founder and CEO]
Skype: elico.corp. Phone: + 86 186 2136 1670 (Cell), + 86 21 6211 8017/27/37 (Office)
Elico Shanghai (Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Singapore) Odoo Gold Partner, best Odoo Partner 2014 for APAC
On 08/18/2016 12:58 PM, Eric Caudal wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:86a0f442-7ff1-b532-9ee9-5fc9f1f88061@elico-corp.com" type="cite">

Hi Graeme,

Agree: I was a bit too direct/simplistic here.

Nevertheless if necessary (which is not that often), we can always check back the information and retrieve what belongs to who.

This was my main point actually, to avoid long list in all files.

--
Eric Caudal [Founder and CEO]
Skype: elico.corp. Phone: + 86 186 2136 1670 (Cell), + 86 21 6211 8017/27/37 (Office)
Elico Shanghai (Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Singapore) Odoo Gold Partner, best Odoo Partner 2014 for APAC
On 08/18/2016 11:23 AM, Graeme Gellatly wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:CAFmBtG1Vm6WqPNMDndKEwjfLpPLmRk8Co3BLxqQAyO0Ftfr35A@mail.gmail.com" type="cite">
Eric,
 
You need to be careful with your assertions and language.  You can not possibly know what an entity and an employee may have agreed (or any contributor and third party for that matter).  Moreover, where they have agreed shared copyright (a common case as many developers wouldn't take a job without it) nothing in the ECLA or otherwise can limit those rights without their agreement.  Expressly covered in section 3c of ECLA, which covers that contributions are not in violation of a third parties rights.
 
Under an ECLA, the entity is assigning some rights to OCA, based on their own rights.  Do not presume that other, entirely normal and compatible arrangements do not exist.
 
I'm missing some context to the rest of this, but I agree entirely that a long list of contributors/copyright holders etc doesn't really do anything for anyone.
 
On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:38 PM, Eric Caudal <eric.caudal@elico-corp.com> wrote:

Employees working for an entity and covered by the ECLA do not retain copyright, the entity does.

Not even talking about the complexity of the maintenance, linking the individuals in the copyright header doesnot bring much.

Having a general list in README is enough: whenever you have a claim on property or wish to contact the author, you can simply ask and/or traceback via github.

This doesnot happen not so often so let's not make a complex rule for such exception.

 

--
Eric Caudal [Founder and CEO]
Skype: elico.corp. Phone: + 86 186 2136 1670 (Cell), + 86 21 6211 8017/27/37 (Office)
Elico Shanghai (Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Singapore) Odoo Gold Partner, best Odoo Partner 2014 for APAC
On 08/18/2016 01:24 AM, Dave Lasley wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:EA6C5E6C-00BC-4E18-9B33-787467184015@laslabs.com" type="cite">

Copyright is explicitly defined and noted as a right retained by the contributing entity as part of the OCA CLA. 

 
I’m all for attribution, but I think we are mixing a legal and an open source concept. Could we instead readd the @author tag, or something similar?
 
On Aug 17, 2016, at 10:08 AM, Pedro M. Baeza (Tecnativa) <pedro.baeza@tecnativa.com> wrote:
 
These questions depend a lot on the copyright laws of each country, but the copyright itself is too tied to private world instead of open source, because the copyright means rights over the exploitation of that work.
 
In this case, we prefer to consider the copyright as an attribution line, giving the developers the credits for their work.
 
Regards.
 
2016-08-17 17:53 GMT+02:00 Dave Lasley <dave@laslabs.com>:

Hi All,

 
A conversation just started up in a pull request regarding the copyright assertions in our code headers, and I figured it would be better to maybe break it out into its own forum instead.
 
The conversation is on Github here if you would like to read it - https://github.com/OCA/website/pull/202/files/0dd4e1cce88c7d96850b8b295ab56d15f7812f03#r75140154
 
The high level issue at hand here is whether we should be adding individuals to the copyright, if that copyright is being asserted by a company.
 
The arguments for adding authors as well as companies:
 
  • This allows for attribution to the author on a per-file basis
  • This allows for individual to be contacted regarding specifics of work that was submitted
 
The arguments against:
 
  • This creates ambiguity of the copyright, asserting that both the Company and Individual hold copyright to the code
  • This adds undue burden on maintainers in instances where the assertion needs to be updated, such as in my block reasoning 
 
I would love to see some more thoughts on this.

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Raphaël Valyi
Founder and consultant
+55 21 3942-2434


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