New copyright policy explained

On 2018-09-15 meeting, the Trustees have given the final stamp of approval to the new Gentoo copyright policy outlined in GLEP 76. This policy is the result of work that has been slowly progressing since 2005, and that has taken considerable speed by the end of 2017. It is a major step forward from the status quo that has been used since the forming of Gentoo Foundation, and that mostly has been inherited from earlier Gentoo Technologies.

The policy aims to cover all copyright-related aspects, bringing Gentoo in line with the practices used in many other large open source projects. Most notably, it introduces a concept of Gentoo Certificate of Origin that requires all contributors to confirm that they are entitled to submit their contributions to Gentoo, and corrects the copyright attribution policy to be viable under more jurisdictions.

This article aims to shortly reiterate over the most important points in the new copyright policy, and provide a detailed guide on following it in Q&A form.

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