Bug#678607: Bug#677013: RFS: time
The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to gmane.linux.debian.devel.mentors as well.
Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> Bart Martens <bartm@debian.org> writes:
>
> > That "authors" are not the same as "copyright holders" is simply a
> > fact regardless of what debian-policy states. For example, the
> > programmer who wrote some software can be the "author" and the
> > company the programmer was working for can be the "copyright
> > holder".
>
> This is the part I don't find this at all obvious. To me, it's the
> difference between referring to the collective entity or disassembling
> it into its constituent parts. […]
In many cases, the programmer can be working for a company and yet not
properly considered to be a “constituent part” of that company.
The most obvious example is a contract programmer coming in to do a
specific work; the programmer has an entirely different employer from
the organisation who hired them for the work.
Another obvious example is where the copyright is later transferred to
another party; while this common action changes the work's copyright
holder, it would be false and misleading to say that it changes the
work's author.
So the two are certainly distinct in many common cases.
> It sounds like to you the word "author" implies an individual human
> being always, and isn't correct to use about a collective entity like
> a volunteer project, non-profit umbrella, or company.
I see a different distinction being drawn, and I interpreted Bart as
drawing this one: the distinction between who *wrote* the work (the
author) versus who *currently holds copyright* in the work (the
copyright holder.
That is, an organisation might hire a contract programmer to write the
‘time’ program. The programmer is not a part of that organisation. The
programmer is the author; the organisation who hired them is (by
default, in many jurisdictions) the copyright holder.
> I always assumed (and indeed still do believe) that the larger entity
> for which the programmers are either working or volunteering was a
> reasonable "author" for this purpose.
So I agree with Bart that it's frequently and trivially incorrect to
equate “author” with “copyright holder”.
> I don't believe that I'm doing this. :) The opinion I'm expressing
> here is exactly the opinion that I've applied in all of my own
> packaging, and which I had, prior to this thread, assumed was the
> interpretation that everyone held.
On the other hand, I pretty much follow the practice Russ is advocating
here. I think Policy is wrong to talk about “author” where it means
“copyright holder”, and I assume the intent is the latter and not the
former.
> We're both on the same page about applying the same standards to
> sponsoring as one would generally apply to any other package in the
> archive; I think this is just a disagreement over what the existing
> Policy text means. Now that I've seen this thread, I can certainly see
> where it's unclear.
Thank you for filing a bug report over this; though this ambiguity
bothered me, it never reached the threshold for me to file a report for
it.
--
\ “The cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of |
`\ ignorance.” —Thomas Jefferson |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
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