Re: Handling CPAN authors that are not responsive
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 12:05 PM, Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 11:39:18AM +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote:
>> hi,
>>
>> I am just thinking aloud here:
>>
>> If I am not mistaken once in a while (or maybe more frequently)
>> you encounter a module that lacks copyright information or needs
>> some code patching in order to include in Debian.
>> Some you get bug reports that you fix and would want to get it included
>> the original CPAN module as well.
>>
>> If the CPAN author is responsive and make the changes. Great.
>>
>> What happens when the author is not responsive?
>> Do you take over the maintenance of the module?
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't really believe that taking over
> maintainership (if you mean it in the CPAN upload sense) would fix the
> copyright issues. It would be kind of... uncouth... (not to mention
> illegal ;) to take over a distribution and then claim copyright over all
> of the code inherited from the previous authors/maintainers :) So, even
> in this case, the issue of determining the licensing and copyright
> information for all of the existing code would still stand, especially
> WRT uploading to the Debian archive and pleasing our beloved FTP masters
> :)
>
> So the only way I see in such a case is to just not do anything about
> the module until there is a response from the maintainer. IMHO,
> anything else would not really satisfy the legal requirements of
> handling others' code (and documentation, data, etc).
Right. I have not explained it fully. Sorry for that.
What I thought in this case is that if and once you get an e-mail
response from the author clarifying the copyright you would probably
ask her to upload a new version to CPAN. If she cannot do that
(e.g. lack of time). You could offer to take over maintenance or offer
to try to find a maintainer.
So we are not necessarily talking about totally unresponsive authors.
Now you already have the legal issues settled you "just" need to find
someone with more time and tuits.
Gabor
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