On Jan 1, 2008 10:39 AM, Francesco Poli wrote: > (typo: my name is Francesco, not Francisco...)
Argh, sorry. Too much Hamlet! I've expanded the article this morning, and corrected the typo. > You think that these clauses only apply to copyright > notices that are placed *above* the license text, while > giving permission to strip or alter isolated copyright > notices that are near a line that just refers to the > license text. Did I get what you mean? Yep. > I'm not convinced that this is the case. > Firstoff, does the law allow removing or altering appropriate > copyright notices? I don't think so, but I'll leave this argument > to real lawyers... The argument against this is that some licenses, all those that have a Y in Column B of my survey, require this explicitly and some don't. None, however, qualify it in terms of a universal restriction that the licenses are simply reminding you of. This is the heuristic argument I used with myself in lieu of being a lawyer. In fact, I didn't think about it much—it just seemed like common sense to me. At the very least, a license that makes this point explicit makes me feel better that a requirement I care about is going to be noticed by people using my software. > Secondly, I think that the license text says "the above copyright > notice" just because it is designed to be included verbatim in > each file. People don't include it verbatim in each file, though. James Clark doesn't do that in Expat, for example! "See the file copying.txt for copying permission." - e.g. expat/xmlparse/xmlparse.c The requirement text in the Expat license is: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." The *nature* of required inclusion isn't elucidated upon. > if you prefer placing the license text in a centralized file (e.g.: > LICENSE.txt) and just put copyright notices (+ a line pointing > to the centralized file) in each source file, that's just a matter > of practical convenience But then the license only requires that the copyright notice and the permission notice be preserved, which means the LICENSE.txt file. > I don't think that this could alter the meaning of the license, which > mandates the preservation of copyright notices... No, it says the "above copyright notice and this permission notice" only. When you're using a LICENSE.txt file, that means the content of the LICENSE.txt file only. It doesn't say anything about anything else. > Disclaimers: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP. Same here! :-) -- Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/
