Hi,
Since this year began with the website being free of the old charset
mess, I wonder if we could continue, and try to address as much as we
can of the copyright/license mess, starting with the copyright.
Talking on IRC with Rhonda and others, we came to the conclusion that
even if we'll have trouble to handle the previous mess, nothing should
stop us to address the future one.
I don't know what would be the best approach for future contributors
(i.e. I don't know if we'll need to ask them explicitly for their
consent, or if a page on our website would be enough), but for current
and past contributors, we need their consent.
We could contact every current contributor, and ask them if they are OK to:
- grant copyright of their future contributions to SPI;
- grant copyright of their past contributions to SPI.
If they refuse to grant copyright of their future contributions to SPI,
or if they don't respond, the first action would be to remove their
commit access, so starting at 2012, all the new content of the
website will be copyright SPI.
We'll then have to contact previous contributors (that don't have commit
access anymore) and ask them to grant copyright of their previous
contributions to SPI.
Once the cleanup is done for future contribution, starting at , we
can tag all previous pages that are not fully copyright SPI, using a tag
that can be handled later with some WML magic, e.g.:
#use wml::debian::copyright years="1997, 1999" holder="John Doe"
#use wml::debian::copyright years="2007-2011" holder="Jane Doe"
if John Doe edited the page in 1997 and 1999 and Jane Doe between 2007
and 2011, and those are the only editors of this page who didn't grant
their copyright to SPI.
We'll of course add this footer in translations too, and maybe some more
lines will be needed there (if translators didn't grant their copyright
to SPI). Translation coordinators will of course be of great help if
they can handle their translated part of the website.
Unless someone objects on the principle, we'll start bugging
coordinators with this request. The DPN could give input about the
better approach to handle and draft these request, I don't know if we
need something as formal as the FSF does for translation [0], asking to
reply on the webmaster@d.o address might be enough (it will be archived
on master.d.o), the same way we ask new developers to agree with DMUP.
0: http://translationproject.org/html/whydisclaim.html
Once the copyright granted to SPI, it will be a lot easier to address
the licensing issue, but I would prefer not to take care of everything
at once (given past experience, trying to do everything at once is
doomed to fail): this is a long standing issue that has seen no update
in years, and as stated, I'd be in favor to
- first: handle copyright for future contributions;
- second: handle copyright for past contributions;
- third: handle copyright exceptions that will allow us to relicense the
website content.
Regards
David
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