On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:26:47 -0500, Carol Spears <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 2003-02-10 at 1337.37 +0100, Rapha?l Quinet typed this: > > I see that the footer of the sample page that you provided includes a > > reference to "The GIMP Team". I don't know how others feel about > > that, but I do not like to give credits on every page of the site. > > The GIMP itself does not include a "credits" entry at the bottom of > > every menu and those who really want to know who contributed to the > > GIMP have to locate the appropriate entry. Similary, I do not think > > that it is necessary to include a copyright notice and a link to a > > list of contributors on every page. > > > well, there is a little history to that inclusion. a commercial site > stole the design. the designer had serious issues. i guess that the > whole footer was developed that time, and was made like it is more for > balance on the page. > > the reason cited for the theft was that they found the layout on a > googlable web page (the old hurl site) and that it wasn't copyrighted.
Obviously, the thief who claimed that does not know much about the copyright laws (regardless of the country he/she is living in), or is trying to ignore them on purpose. IANAL, but it is not necessary to add a visible copyright message. Since several years now, most countries in the world have adopted laws that make every published work copyrighted by default, unless the author explicitely states that the work is in the public domain. So copying anything without the author's consent is illegal. Besides, why should the copyright notice be visible? If the main goal is to prevent someone from copying the HTML code or the layout of the pages, it would be enough to add a statement in a HTML comment. Or if it has to be visible on the page, then I would go for "font-size:1px". > as a user, i would see the list of names of those involved with gimp, > and all i wanted was to be included as well. > > i searched and searched for photos and more information, which in itself > might be a good reason not to put lists of people on any of the sites > ... Heh. ;-) Well, I certainly understand that it is nice to be part of that list. However, such lists are often biased. Not only because they often keep some old contributors longer than necessary (nobody dares removing them from the list or creating a "past contributors" section) but also because some contributors do not get the credits that they would deserve. In some other project, I was surprised to see that some people were not credited altough they did a lot more work than some of those who were included in the credits for that project. It turns out that those guys were usually keeping a low profile and they never asked to be included in the credits. One might think that they were simply too shy, but this is probably a cultural thing as well (most of these people were from [Far-]Eastern countries). Anyway, it is probably unavoidable to have a list of contributors somewhere. I am not really against that, but I would not like to advertise it too much. As I wrote in my previous message, I do not think that it is necessary to include a link on every page. > as the person who wrote team.html, it is hard and unsavory to come up > with titles and such. if this page disappears, i wouldn't mind. i > would however like my mom to see my name there before it goes. (i am > proud of what is there ...) Hey, wait... I was talking about developer.gimp.org, not about the new design for the main site. It looks like you are talking about the latter. I didn't know that you had written a "team.html" for the new site. I should have checked first, sorry. [Later...] Ah, now I see it (on mmmaybe.g.o). Well, my name is not there, so this is a _proof_ that these lists _are_ biased! ;-) Errr... No, seriously, this list is fine. Don't add my name there. But I am surprised to see a "Web Team", though. Probably something that was not discussed on the mailing list, again... <ducks> ;-) Regarding the "Core Team", you could simply include the list from the AUTHORS file (current CVS). Or maybe the results from the script that I started writing a few weeks ago. If I ever get a chance to finish it. I would like to be able to include a list of those who have contributed something through Bugzilla. This is a bit tricky. > > [...] I prefer keep the list in a place that can be > > found by those who are looking for it, but without advertising it on > > every page. > > > i like on the current site how someone was included because he bought a > beer for someone (the author of this letter excluded) a beer. I think that I am a bit lost, here. I do not understand that reference. Are you refering to the current www.gimp.org site, to the developers' site or to mmmaybe.g.o? Maybe I am blind or just too thick? ;-) > i have carefully protected this site from that sort of thing. so, a > little credit there maybe .... Errr... Sure. Errr... Do you like Belgian beers? I have a nice collection of trappist beers at home. ;-) > > I have the same opinion for the main site, by the way. There is a > > list of people on http://www.gimp.org/the_gimp_org_about.html - It is > > incredibly inaccurate (more than half of the people mentioned there > > have not contributed a single line of code in the last year) but it is > > there for historical reasons. It is not advertised from the other > > pages. I hope that the new design will not put too much emphasis on > > the credits list or on a copyright notice. > > > only what is needed. lots of people need to be kept happy. others > might need to be kept at arms length. the copyright seems to fix both > potential problems nicely. other solutions will be gladly considered. Now, if we talk about the main site, this is different. I have less to say there because I have been unfortunately excluded from the "web team" although I have always been on the gimp-web mailing list <ducks again>. But I still think that having a prominent link on every page is a bit excessive. Those who want to find who did what could find this information easily if it was located in a section "About this site" as a sub-section of "About The GIMP". -Raphaël P.S.: This message has to be read with the tongue firmly planted in the cheek. Don't take this too seriously. :-) _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
