rpms/blam/F-9 blam.spec,1.24,1.25

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:55:38 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:

> On Thursday 25 September 2008, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> 
> > I wonder even more why rpmdev-bumpspec says
> >
> >     Copyright (c) 2005-2008 Red Hat Inc.
> >
> > which is not correct. 2005 may be true for its origin, the pre-Fedora
> > Extras era. For the first mass-rebuilds and beyond that it was developed
> > further by me, and just because I don't want to claim full copyright,
> > it should not be given to Red Hat for 2006-2008. That sounds very wrong
> > to me, because nobody at Red Hat has been an author of changes to the
> > script in those years.
> 
> This was discussed in several mails between you, me and notting in March when 
> I was about to add the script in rpmdevtools.  I asked you to add copyright 
> notices to the script, and you added it but without mentioning a copyright 
> holder.

I've found those mails, but they don't cover such a very specific
copyright line that differs from the one I called "reasonable".
It's simply not accurate.

> When discussing it further, you concluded "(c) Fedora Project ... sounds 
> reasonable. Who is/are the original author(s)? [...]" 

Because I'm not a lawyer, and the script is derived work based on something
that didn't have any legal stuff attached to it at all. I wrote the
following and added Bill:

: (c) Fedora Project ... sounds reasonable.
: 
: Who is/are the original author(s)? The skeleton of the original code is
: still present. If memory serves correctly, the first version of the script
: was given out by someone at Red Hat for the pre-Fedora Extras 3 period and
: then improved for the first mass-rebuilds. But who exactly was the original
: author, I don't know. notting or sopwith or mkj or gafton? Neither one?

You see? With an existing list of authors, I could have added myself.
But claiming full copyright and credits [for any original bits that
may be left] is an entirely different thing.

> and did not mention 
> that you would like to have your name there.

I don't care about my name in there. I don't get my name attached to
lots of patches for F/LOSS either. And this is just a script that can be
rewritten from scratch if someone insists on doing that.

> To your question (which 
> mentioned someone at Red Hat giving it out for the pre-Fedora Extras 3 
> period), Bill answered "If it was given out by someone @RH, you can just put 
> (c) Red Hat on it." and there were no further replies.

True, but Bill apparently was the wrong one to ask. And a different
proposal was made earlier, too. However, the added line changes history.