[flashrom] LGPL

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 01:59:14PM +0100, Rolette, James (Jay) wrote:
> Hi Luc,
> 
> Not sure I understand the expression here... hairy == questionable/unlikely?

Yes.

> Ok.  Wasn't sure how copyright assignment was being handled on flashrom.  

Copyright is usually the name of the principal authors.

> > So, here is the deal, a deal that i think most people on this ml would 
> > wholeheartedly agree with: if _you_ want LGPL, _you_ get to sollicite 
> > all individual contributors.
> 
> Fair enough.  A few questions on that:
> 
> 1) I'm assuming there are is a small core of folks that form the heart of
> the project.  I'd like to start with them if possible because there is no
> point in going broader than that if the core developers don't agree.
> 
> Would someone be willing to provide a list of the "leaders"?  A quick look
> at the source shows a few names that show up a lot (Uwe, Carl-Daniel,
> Stefan, etc.), but always hard to tell without the benefit of having
> followed the project over time.

http://www.ohloh.net/p/flashrom/contributors?page=1

Sounds like a start, but that's the quick and easy bit of the project.

> 2) What is required from each contributor?  Just an email approving a move
> to LGPL for their contribution?  Something more specific?

Afaik, yes, but don't take my word for it.

> 3) Is it ok to derive the list of approvers based on the copyright statement
> in the source files?

No.

You will have to trawl through the full development history, and even 
look into the origins of commits as this project does not use a VCS 
which is capable of recording author and committer separately. Since 
development goes back to 2004, you would always have to do some of that.
That's 1520 commits where you have to go and figure out the real author, 
and only a third or so is using signed-off-by statements.

Good luck.

Luc Verhaegen.