Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
>> >> 630c630
>> >> < "Copyright (C) 1998-2012 Erik Andersen, Rob
>> >> Landley, Denys Vlasenko\n"
>> >> ---
>> >>> "Copyright (C) 1998-2011 Erik Andersen, Rob
>> >> Landley, Denys Vlasenko\n"
>> >> Took a little searching to find which file it was in. I'm assuming
>> >> it should be 2012, but there might be a reason it is changed, or
>> >> might just be it is to minor of an issue?
> On Thursday 12 July 2012 03:16:32 Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
>> We should probably be careful here in that notice to make sure it's
>> abundantly accurate. Specifically, it would be better if we were
>> clearer about the years. For example, I am quite sure Erik hasn't
>> made any contributions in 2012, and maybe not in 2011 either.
>>
>> It should probably be something like:
>> "Copyright (C) 1998-<SOME_YEAR> Erik Andersen,
>> (C) SOME_YEAR-SOME_YEAR Rob Landley, (C) SOME_YEAR-2012 Denys Vlasenko."
Tito wrote at 01:36 (EDT):
> maybe "Copyright (C) 1998-2012 by the Busybox project developers" and
> then adding a full list to the source package and to the website could
> be a solution.
There is a problem with this, although I don't think it's the concern
Alain raised is correct (more on that below).
The main value in having a good copyright notice *in the binary* is, as
I mentioned: when binary distributions occur, it's slightly easier in an
enforcement action to trivially identify that the copyright holders'
rights have been infringed. I've suggested an alternative below that
would probably serve this purpose.
But, the main problem with the idea above "The BusyBox Project
Developers" isn't a legal entity per se. BusyBox is part of the
Conservancy, which does hold a few copyrights that have been assigned to
it by a few developers, so we *could* list Conservancy in the list if we
want. But, that aside, listing a copyright notice that is a name that
is *not* a real legal corporate entity or individual is pointless.
Therefore, my suggestion now is to change this:
"Copyright (C) 1998-2012 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenko\n"
"and others. Licensed under GPLv2.\n"
"See source distribution for full notice.\n"
to this:
"BusyBox is copyrighted by many authors between 1998-2012.\n"
"Licensed under GPLv2. See source distribution for detailed\n"
"copyright notices.\n"
That may be the best option, really. What do people think?
The trade-off here is really down to bytes that end up in the binary.
Ideally, we'd list all the copyright notices that Michael Setzer found
with his sed script, but that's 400 lines of copyright notices and
that's surely too much for the binary.
Ultimately, though, I think it's up to the community to decide what key
copyright holders we want to list in the binary officially.
Alain Mouette wrote:
>>> This is not good. In case of a court dispute, all copyright owners
>>> have to be present. So if you want the copyright do be good for
>>> something, it has to be nominal!
Alain, I'm not sure I understand your point. Any given copyright holder
can enforce the license -- Denys, Erik, and Conservancy together as
copyright holders do this often without involvement of other copyright
holders. Having more copyright holders involved in GPL enforcement is
good, and if other copyright holders want to be involved, they should of
course contact me and I can get you all setup (the advantage to this is
you also get direct input into the process of how Conservancy does
enforcement).
However, it's not required that all copyright holders be present to act.
As a practical matter, you need enough copyright holders present such
that your copyrights can't be trivially written out by a GPL violator,
but with Conservancy, Erik, and Denys, we meet that bar easily already
on BusyBox.
Meanwhile, it's also not required that the notices appear perfectly in
the copyright material, either. Notices are helpful for the reasons I
explained above, but they aren't mandatory.
As usual, IANAL, TINLA, etc.
--
-- bkuhn
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