Hi, On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 10:00:32AM +0100, Mathieu Roy wrote: > Hello, > > I noticed in lib/Savannah/User.pm the following > > # Copyright 2003-2004 (c) Mathieu Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > # Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. > > First, unless a copyright get assigned to the FSF formally (filled out > papers), it is completely illegal.
I refered to the code from the FSF sysadmins, who explicitely told me that the code they write is copyrighted by the FSF and released under the GNU GPL. I don't think I added code that I produced myself in this file in particular; however, maybe I forgot to add my copyright notice in some files. > Secondly, it is best to get consistent with the way things are written > (in extenso, it is ugly to have lines with the (c) not at the same > place). In this case, it would be good to use the layout described at: http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html > Thirdly, when you write a new copyright line, it looks like at some > point it is a new list that begins. Not sure; it the year differs for each copyright holder, then we can't factorize them. > I know in the past some "Copyright (C) Free Software Foundation, > Inc." were added in numerous places... by mistake. It had no legal > ground, and should have been removed everywhere. Well, in this case, it was justified :) > The corrected version would be > > # Copyright 2003-2004 (c) Mathieu Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > # YourNAME <youraddress> As far as I'm concerned, I would use: # Copyright (C) 2003, 2004, 2005 Mathieu Roy # Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. # Copyright (C) 2004, 2005 Sylvain Beucler Usually I add personal information such as e-mail addresses below in the file. Using spaces/tabs to align the name is not good in the long run, when you get a *big* list of years such as glibc's. I also stick to the format described in maintain.texi. > If you do have filled out forms of FSF USA copyright assignement, > please mention it in the AUTHORS file, and when you do add your > copyright, do so so it appears in the list of the current version > developers. > When there are several "copyright" in the code, it highlight the > status of the code when the software was called sourceforge > (alexandria) and then savannah. I'll check my changes to see who did what. I have not filled any copyright assignement form. > If you do not have filled out such forms but intend to do so, note > that it may not really be useful for Savane. Reading > <http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legal-Matters> gives > me the filling that such copyright assignement is only if the only > copyright holder is the FSF USA. For obvious reasons (assigning > copyright to someone else is a matter of trust, isn't it) Savane will > never be completely assigned to the FSF USA. Yeah, as a GNU maintainer and as a Savannah project evaluator, I did read maintain.texi thoroughly :) Incidentally, it is first a matter of copyright, since we would have to get people at VA Software / Xerox / etc. also assign their copyright on the code to the FSF :)A -- Sylvain
