Re: [PATCH/RFC] Developer's Certificate of Origin: default to COPYING

On 2013-09-12 18:44, Linus Torvalds wrote:

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Linus, this is not limited to us, so I am bothering you; sorry about
that.

My instinct tells me that some competent lawyers at linux-foundation
helped you with the wording of DCO, and we amateurs shouldn't be
mucking with the text like this patch does at all, but just in case
you might find it interesting...

There were lawyers involved, yes.

I'm not sure there is any actual confusion, because the fact is,
lawyers aren't robots or programmers, and they have the human
qualities of understanding implications.

Well stated.  :)

So I'm actually inclined to
not change legal text unless a lawyer actually tells me that it's
needed.

Is it worthwhile to poke a lawyer about this as a precaution?  (If so,
who?)  Or do we wait for a motivating event?

Plus even if this change was needed, why would anybody point to
"COPYING". It's much better to just say "the copyright license of the
file", knowing that different projects have different rules about this
all, and some projects mix files from different sources, where parts
of the tree may be under different licenses that may be explained
elsewhere..

I agree that your phrasing is better.

-Richard