Created attachment 187553 [details] patch file Current COPYRIGHT file describes as following. * Copyright of the FreeBSD Ports Collection is held by The FreeBSD Project. * The FreeBSD Ports Collection is distributed under the 2 clause BSD license. But there are at least 2 exceptions that does not match above. 1. Files that explicitly claim their copyright holder and/or license terms in them. 2. Patches obtained from upstream. So I update COPYRIGHT to make it fit to real status.
This change represents a misunderstanding of copyright law. The FreeBSD Ports Collection is an assemblage subject to copyright separate from the copyright on its components. This is what COPYRIGHT refers to and a clarification seems unnecessary. Over to portmgr for disposition.
(In reply to Brooks Davis from comment #1) Well, while I admit I'm not familiar with copyright law I can at least point out one example which conflicts with your opinion. It is COPRIGHT file of FreeBSD base system. https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/COPYRIGHT?view=markup It is composed of following 4 sections. 1. License terms of FreeBSD. 2. License terms of 4.4BSD and 4.4BSD-lite. 3. Description about permission that IEEE and ACS X9 have given the FreeBSD Project to reprint portions of their documentation. 4. Note about copyright update of UC Berkeley's BSD source. According to your opinion only first one is required and others are unnecessary.
2 is the terms of the previous assemblage which are appropriate to preserve. 3 and 4 could have been placed elsewhere, but COPYRIGHT was used to record blanket terms applying to large portions of the tree. You're change isn't wrong, it's just IMO unnecessary.
Adding core@ for insight. Like Brooks says, I really do not think the change is needed.
After consulting core, this would need a lot of lawyer consulting, and is not worth the trouble.