I am not a lawyer and the following is yet another one of my heretical POVs.
Legally speaking the copyright notice is not even required in each source file as long
as the whole work can be unequivocally attributed to their rightful owners through
other means.
Example 1) In my home I don't have my name written on every item and piece of
furniture. There is a littler sign on the door that says this is my home. It follows
that everything contained therein is my property.
Example 2) If you look inside any book, you are likely to find that there is only one
copyright notice covering the whole book. You are very unlikely to find another
copyright in no sentence, no paragraph, nor in any section not even in any chapter.
You will find one copyright section inside the cover page.
Copyright law applies the same way to software as to books.
Tearing out a page from a book does not remove the copyright of the author even if
there is no copyright notice on the torn out page. Think about it for a second.
Why are putting copyright notices in every source code file? Because we can and it is
admitted by industry practice, not because we have to.
At 22:29 09.01.2002 -0500, Ted Husted wrote:
>At this time, the so-called short form should not be used. Although we
>are told that it is legally defensible.
>
>http://nagoya.apache.org:8080/jyve-faq/Turbine/screen/DisplayQuestionAnswer/action/SetAll/project_id/2/faq_id/38/topic_id/205/question_id/787
>
>The ASF chair has made a posting to the Committers list regarding a new
>license, which will support a short form, but approval is still
>forthcoming.
>
>-Ted.
>
>
>"Andrew C. Oliver" wrote:
>>
>> Pete,
>>
>> Just a question. Maybe I missed this in the discussions. Every once
>> and a while the "short license" versus "big license" discussion goes
>> through here. Meaning the source code for some projects whether
>> correctly or incorrectly be convention uses a statement and short
>> reference to the license and others post the license in its entirety.
>> Did anyone consult those "licensing" folks to check if there was a legal
>> reasoning? While I have no particular passion on this and don't wish to
>> see a war here, I do know some projects use one and others use another
>> and I'm just curious if there are any legal problems that could result.
>>
>> (at POI we use the long form convention because it seems to be in line
>> with where the discussion leaned on here and I'm a paranoid type person)
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Andy
>> --
>> www.superlinksoftware.com
>> www.sourceforge.net/projects/poi - port of Excel format to java
>> http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4487555.html
>> - fix java generics!
>>
>> The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to
>> vote.
>> -Ambassador Kosh
>>
>> --
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>
>-- Ted Husted, Husted dot Com, Fairport NY USA.
>-- Building Java web applications with Struts.
>-- Tel +1 585 737-3463.
>-- Web http://www.husted.com/struts/
>
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