Sven Vermeulen posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Mon, 14 Feb 2005 18:05:59 +0100:
> I don't know why ranges are even applied generally, but honestly, I > believe they're better: > Copyright 1999 - 2005 Gentoo Foundation > versus > Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Gentoo Foundation Actually, this brings up a good point. Shouldn't part of those be "Gentoo Technology" or whatever it was before? Certainly, Gentoo Foundation only existed from 2004. The copyrights were assigned moving forward, certainly (they were, right???), but from some of the BSD settlement stuff just made public, and the SCO group fallout, the examples I've seen even where copyright going forward was assigned to a new entity, still showed the original copyright year and entity as well as the new one. Certainly, IANAL and all that, but getting one knowledgeable in copyright issues to look at this would be wise. If we screw it up, it could come back to haunt us. > Lawfully, I believe only the initial year is required (1999 in the > example). This is covered by the "Omission of Notice" or "Error in notice" > parts of the copyright directive. > http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.html has some information on this. AFAIK, just 1999 would be sufficient for unitary works, where continued changes were made to the same set of files or singular product. The range covers the case as with Gentoo where additional features or singular entities are added to the whole collective entity. At least in the US, specific copyright notice of claim is no longer required, according to what I've read. However, adding the continuing years should clear up any ambiguity, particularly as it pertains to the collective work vs. the individual work. IOW, while individual copyrights should be automatic in the US, should there ever be a case where the decision rode on the intent to incorporate the individual component (ebuild or whatever) into the collective, a single year collective copyright of 1999 might demonstrate individual works added since then were not to be construed as part of the collective, while claiming the range in the collective copyright makes it unambiguous that it is a continuing collective work and that individual works should continue to be treated as part of the whole. Again, however, that's assuming we aren't screwing up by attributing a range to an organization that didn't even exist for most of that range. I'd be a lot more comfortable if I knew for sure we shouldn't be keeping earlier works and that range under the old Gentoo Technologies or whatever it was. Again, IANAL and could be seriously screwed up in the above. IMO, however, it's certainly worth getting a copyright lawyer to look at it and tell us for sure! -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- [email protected] mailing list
