[DSE-Dev] Adopting Fedora SELinux patches by Debian?

[Daniel J Walsh]

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Erich Schubert wrote:
> Hi Václav,
>> please, can I take SE Linux patches from Fedora RPM and use these in
>> bug-reports against the Debian package for inclusion?
> 
> IMHO: yes.
> 
>> If it is OK, should be there some copyright notice in a patch included in
>> the Debian source package?
> 
> IANAL, but for all I know, patches (unless they add major new
> functionality) are not considered a work of their own, so the original
> author can apply bug fix patches without having to share the copyright
> on the application with the contributor. Also if you submit a patch that
> doesn't modify the copyright statement present in most files I figure
> you somehow agree to transfer copyright of these changes to the original
> author. (Major contributions often come with new files, and these files
> often bear the contributors name, so it doesn't apply there).
> Just my € 0.02, and I'm not a lawyer.
> 
> If possible, credit the author of the patch, but you don't have to step
> of your own way to find out who actually wrote the patch. If you point
> to the fedora/whatever location you picked the patch from that should be
> fine, too - you didn't claim it was a work of your own, but pointed to
> the location where you got it from (which of course should make it
> somehow obvious that copying is okay, though. Given that we're talking
> opensource applications here, it's probably safe to assume this as
> default)
I don't know what the legal requirements are, but I am not concerned
about the patches being used.  I hope to get most upstream and any
changes you make to policy I will probably put into Fedora.
> 
> best regards,
> Erich Schubert

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