On 09/23/2011 06:40 PM, Lex Trotman wrote:
Hi Matthew,
As threatened...
Heh, thanks, they're good details that confirm what I've observed from
various other projects.
I was just looking at these files for some reason [...]
I suspect that these files are rather confused due to lack of love.
IMHO if these are not going to be kept up to date they better be
deleted.
Given the other information you provided, I'd say, at least after the
Git switch that the AUTHORS (and COMMITTERS) files should just be
generated from git log for tarballs. If someone just provides a plain
diff for a patch, you can still set the author to them (not sure can SVN
do this?). If they send a pull request/git format-patch it's automatic.
If they are going to be kept up to date, now before release is the
time. IMHO thanks should be *everyone* [1].
Seems to make sense, though it could be a pain. IMO, the bug number
that's currently used (I think) is enough for bug/feature tracker stuff.
Otherwise, you'd have a lot of these in the THANKS file:
...
Anonymous <http://accounts.google.com> - reported some bug
Anonymous <no known email address> - requested some feature
...
On a similar topic, I noticed in the source files, on top of the license in
the comments, some files list Nick and Enrico as the copyright holders, some
[...]
Copyright assignment is used by some projects but as you say there
needs to be a legal entity to receive it. And what country would this
legal entity exist in? Who would own it and how wold it be run and
paid for. And legal paperwork is needed for contributions, including
employer disclaimer (to prove they don't own the software you write).
All in all Noooooooo.
For Geany I would've said the project lead/maintainer with the
copyrights getting transferred when the person filling that role
changes. But yeah, way too much hassle for all the legal requirements.
Copyright law isn't uniform around the world, but I have been advised
that the most common is that:
1. the originator has copyright whether they want it or not, and
usually automatically without having to claim it
Which means just having a proper VCS log (with proper author) would be
enough to track all the bits and pieces of who owns copyright on what?
Seems like that would be better than listing every single copyright info
for everyone who ever changed the file. If the ChangeLog is generated
from the VCS log, IIUC it will have all the required info for tarballs.
Also, if someone contributes a significant amount of code to one or more
files, does that mean they hand-over the copyright of that code to one (or
maybe all?) of those people listed in the various file headers?
Too complex, and who?
Ok, just was curious whether the act of submitting code to the Geany
project implicitly signed over copyright. I guess it doesn't work like
that :)
Thanks again!
Cheers,
Matthew Brush
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