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 <date> 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 <date>, 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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