Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
Karl Berry writes: I was only talking about US copyright law. I don't know the answer for a fact myself, it's not like I know where to look in the civil code. Everything you need to know can be found at the US Copyright Office's web site: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/. Under UK copyright law, the opposite is true: If copyright is claimed for more than two consecutive years, then they MUST be specified as a range to be legally valid. Has the UK not signed the Berne Convention? The whole point of it was to avoid such gratuitous differences. (The Berne Convention doesn't require any notice at all, let alone a specific form of notice.) -Larry Jones It's either spectacular, unbelievable success, or crushing, hopeless defeat! There is no middle ground! -- Calvin ___ Bug-cvs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-cvs
Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
Hi Larry.
I was only talking about US copyright law. I don't know the answer
for a fact myself, it's not like I know where to look in the civil
code.
Everything you need to know can be found at the US Copyright
Office's web site: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/.
Under UK copyright law, the opposite is true: If copyright is
claimed for more than two consecutive years, then they MUST be
specified as a range to be legally valid.
Has the UK not signed the Berne Convention? The whole point of it
was to avoid such gratuitous differences. (The Berne Convention
doesn't require any notice at all, let alone a specific form of
notice.)
I've no idea whether the UK has signed the stated convention, but one
point was repeatedly emphasised in a copyright case in which I was
present back in November 2001: If there is no notice stating the year
for which copyright is claimed, then the whole idea of copyright is open
to fraud. The decision as far as that case is concerned was that for
copyright to hold, the item must include a statement that includes the
most recent year for which copyright is claimed.
My understanding is that the following bash script prints a copyright
notice that is both full and sufficient as far as both UK and US law
is concerned, and also puts the software under version 2 of the GPL
(assuming appropriate definitions of the environment variables TITLE
and AUTHOR for the software in question):
#!/bin/bash
echo ${TITLE}
echo Copyright (C) `date +%Y,` ${AUTHOR}
echo Released under the GNU General Public Licence, version 2.
Note that under UK law, it is NOT valid to refer to a licence that has
not yet been written, so the fabled or, at your option, any later
version is invalid here.
Best wishes from Riley.
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Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
Karl Berry writes: It would be good to update CVS to the GPL version 2, and change the copyright notices in the individual files to be what's legally recommended. Why? -Larry Jones The living dead don't NEED to solve word problems. -- Calvin ___ Bug-cvs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-cvs
Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
It would be good to update CVS to the GPL version 2, and change the copyright notices in the individual files to be what's legally recommended. Why? 1) Because there are (small) bugs in version 1. That's why there was a version 2, after all. 2) So that the cvs copyrights have a better chance of standing up in court if they are challenged. That's the whole point of having copyrights and licenses. ___ Bug-cvs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-cvs
Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
Do you know what they are? Not any more. I can research again. But is there a problem with just updating? It's not like the basic meaning changed or anything. It looks to me like the existing copyright notices do follow the suggestions. In what way do you think they're defective? The standard copyright wording for individual source files looks like the below (from a bison source file). (The appendix to the GPL itself has an example of this as well.) The CVS sources, by contrast, look like this (from add.c): /* * Copyright (c) 1992, Brian Berliner and Jeff Polk * Copyright (c) 1989-1992, Brian Berliner * * You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public License as * specified in the README file that comes with the CVS source distribution. There are several problems: 1) Legally, just saying as specified in the README file is not sufficient. Something resembling the actual notice has to appear in each source file. This sucks, but the legal system cannot be bug-fixed. 2) Ranges in copyright years are not allowed. Each year must be written out. This sucks too. 3) There are no copyright years for anything after 1992, but I feel certain that add.c has been modified in the last 10 years :). In general, each year that a There is more information about painful legalities in the GNU maintainers document maintain.texi (of course lots of the stuff in there will be irrelevant to cvs, since it's not technically a GNU project, but lots of it is useful in general): http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain.html#SEC8 Here's the example from bison. /* Subroutines for bison Copyright 1984, 1989, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This file is part of Bison, the GNU Compiler Compiler. Bison is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. Bison is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Bison; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. */ ___ Bug-cvs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-cvs
Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
Karl Berry writes: 1) Because there are (small) bugs in version 1. That's why there was a version 2, after all. Do you know what they are? I've looked at gnu.org, but I can't find any summary of the changes from version 1 to version 2 or any rationale for the revisions. And there are enough minor wording changes to make diff pretty ineffective. 2) So that the cvs copyrights have a better chance of standing up in court if they are challenged. That's the whole point of having copyrights and licenses. It looks to me like the existing copyright notices do follow the suggestions. In what way do you think they're defective? -Larry Jones I think my cerebellum just fused. -- Calvin ___ Bug-cvs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-cvs
Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
Karl Berry writes [quoting me]: Do you know what they are? Not any more. I can research again. But is there a problem with just updating? It's not like the basic meaning changed or anything. But the details may have. If the changes are just clarifications, then I don't have a problem with updating, but there isn't a lot of motivation to do so, either. If the changes remove restrictions, then there could be more motivation to update, but you're already free to apply the more liberal terms. If the changes add restrictions, then we'd have to consider what those restrictions are and whether we want to apply them. Remember that the FSF has a political agenda that the CVS maintainers may or may not agree with. There are several problems [with the existing copyright notices]: First, note that copyright notices are no longer required at all under the Berne Convention, which every country apt to recognize a copyright notice at all has subscribed to. 1) Legally, just saying as specified in the README file is not sufficient. Something resembling the actual notice has to appear in each source file. This sucks, but the legal system cannot be bug-fixed. No, a pointer to the notice is sufficient. See How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs. 2) Ranges in copyright years are not allowed. Each year must be written out. This sucks too. According to the US Copyright Office's Circular 3, even that was not officially allowed. You presumably needed a separate notice for each year. 3) There are no copyright years for anything after 1992, but I feel certain that add.c has been modified in the last 10 years :). In general, each year that a The existing copyright notices are the ones inserted by the original authors of the code. The volunteer maintainers have not added any additional notices, nor have they assigned their rights to the FSF (as you note, CVS is *not* a GNU project), making the legal ownership of the code quite murky and any new notices subject to challenge. Nonetheless, all contributors have agreed (at least implicitly) to allow their code to be distributed under the terms of the GPL, making it all pretty moot. So far as I can see, the only reason to make any changes would be to advance the FSF's political agenda, which I don't feel any compelling reason to do. And the changes would be on very shaky legal ground anyway. -Larry Jones It's clear I'll never have a career in sports until I learn to suppress my survival instinct. -- Calvin ___ Bug-cvs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-cvs
Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
advance the FSF's political agenda There is no political agenda to using the standard copyright notices. However, since you don't want to do so, don't. Sorry to bother. ___ Bug-cvs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-cvs
