Gentoo Copyright Policy Gentoo Copyright Policy 1 2013-04-23 Purpose / Scope
THIS IS A DRAFT POLICY POSTED ONLY FOR COLLABORATION/REVIEW/COMMENT/ETC. THIS POLICY DRAFT HAS NO EFFECT.

This policy documents how Gentoo contributors comply and document copyright for any contributions made to Gentoo. Anyone committing documentation or sources to any repository hosted on Gentoo infrastructure must comply with this policy. OPEN QUESTION - DOES THIS APPLY TO DOCS?

Questions regarding this policy should be directed to the trustees or the -project list. Any concerns over possible copyright violations should be directed to the Trustees if they cannot be worked out to anyone's satisfaction with the appropriate maintainer.

Licensing of Gentoo Projects

All Gentoo projects must abide by the Gentoo Social Contract, being published under an open source license. The license for each project is documented below.

PortageTODOPortage TreeTODODocsTODOeudevTODO
ProjectLicense

Any project hosted on Gentoo infrastructure not listed above must be licensed GPL-2+.

If you wish to add a new Gentoo project to this page, contact the trustees.

Certificate of Origin

All commits to Gentoo-hosted repositories must be accompanied by a certificate of origin. The purpose of the certificate is to declare that the content of the commit may be used in accordance with the project license.

For commits made using CVS, the commiter will certify agreement to the DCO by adding "Signed-off-by: Name/email" to the commit message as a separate line. Repoman will add this automatically if DCO_SIGNED_OFF_BY is set to Name/email in make.conf.

The following is the current Gentoo DCO 1.0:

    
                              Gentoo DCO 1.0  

        By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

        (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I have the
            right to submit it under the open source license indicated in the file;
            or

        (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of my
            knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source license and I
            have the right under that license to submit that work with
            modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under the same
            open source license (unless I am permitted to submit under a different
            license), as indicated in the file; or

        (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other person who
            certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified it.

        (d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution are public
            and that a record of the contribution (including all personal
            information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is maintained
            indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with this project or
            the open source license(s) involved.
The DCO is based on the Linux Kernel DCO.
Copyright Attribution

All files hosted by Gentoo must contain an appropriate copyright notice, as defined by this policy.

A proper copyright notice appears near the top of the file, and reads, "Copyright YEAR LARGEST-CONTRIBUTOR and others (see below)." The largest contributor is whatever entity owns copyright to some portion of the largest number of lines in the file. The "and others (see below)" text may be ommitted if the largest contributor holds copyright to the entire file.

If there are other copyright holders, then somewhere in the file the full list of copyright holders must be listed, or a reference to a list in another file stored in a Gentoo repository.

No file may be committed to a Gentoo repository unless at least 60% of the lines in the file are accounted for in the list of copyright holders. Any content already in a Gentoo repository as of DATE shall count towards the 60% rule even if not attributed. Note that 60% is the minimum required for compliance with this policy - all contributors are strongly encouraged to strive for 100% attribution.

It is the responsibility of anyone making a commit to update the contributor list for any additions made to the repository. Committers are not required to double-check content already in the repository.

Anyone finding a file out of compliance should log a bug against the associated project/package providing as much information as possible. Files that are not brought into compliance within 60 days or upon a request for removal by a aggrieved copyright holder will be removed. Any concerns not addressed by a maintainer can be appealed to the Trustees.

Copyright Assignment

All are welcome and encouraged (but NOT required) to assign copyright for their contributions to the Gentoo Foundation. Doing so makes compliance with this policy easier (fewer copyright holders to list), and allows the Foundation to enforce copyrights and re-license content if appropriate (this will only be done in accordance with the social contract and the FLA).

Copyright is assigned to the Foundation by electronically signing the Gentoo Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA). The agreement may be signed BY TODO... If the scope of the signed agreeement included future contributions, the contributor may document their wish to stop assigning copyright by TODO...

A list of those who have signed this agreement and the scope of their assignments may be found at LINK. This list may be useful when attributing copyright.