Paul,
The link you provide is quite informative -- although I'm a bit
worried about encroaching on armchair lawyering .
>From that link:
> Not every contribution to a free software project is copyrightable
> Since copyright notices are not mandatory, there is generally no harm in
> under-using them, particularly if authorship is recorded in VCS logs.
> Over-use, however, can cause problems.
...
> the project should also discourage contributors from indiscriminately
adding notices.
...
> The developer may include a description of the modification along with
the notice:
> Copyright 2012 Jane Hacker <[email protected]> Fixed random number
generator to output numbers other than 9.
Based on that, how about, instead add to current HACKING.MD:
+
+ Care should be taken when adding copyright statements to existing
files as
+ not every contribution to a free software project is copyrightable. See
+ http://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/originality-requirements.html.
+
+ When adding a copyright based on a modification, you must also include a
+ description of the modification along with the notice. For example:
+ Copyright 2012 Jane Hacker <[email protected]> Fixed
random number
+ generator to output numbers other than 9.
+
Lou
On 2/23/2016 5:22 AM, Paul Jakma wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Feb 2016, Lou Berger wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> The following caught my eye:
>> https://lists.quagga.net/pipermail/quagga-dev/2016-January/014686.html
>>> + at c Copyright @copyright{} 2015 Hewlett Packard Enterprise
>> Development LP
>>
>> Which lead me to finding http://patchwork.quagga.net/patch/1800/ aka
>> https://lists.quagga.net/pipermail/quagga-dev/2016-January/014712.html
>>
>> +You are encouraged add any applicable copyright claims to files being
>> +modified or added. The standard way is to add a string in the following
>> +format near the beginning of the file:
>> +
>> + Copyright (C) <Year> <name of person/entity>[, optional contact details]
>> +
>>
> Yes. My reason for that encouragement is cause it is better to have
> people document claims than not - and at present contributors rarely add
> Copyright strings, even when they likely should. If that suggested
> addition to HACKING can be refined, all the better. :)
>
>> The added copyright statement in the 1st mail conforms with the 2nd
>> mail (change to HACKING.md), but the result of the 1st is to add a
>> Copyright where non has existed before -- which reads to me as if the
>> Copyright is covering the whole file -- clearly not a desired (or
>> probably intended) result.
> My understanding was that a "Copyright ..." claim should not be read as
> exclusive to any other claims, or to (per se) apply to the whole file.
> It's just saying that entity believes it has a (non-exclusive) claim to
> something, somewhere, in that file.
>
> This SFLC doc seems to suggest same (ยง"Maintaining file-scope copyright
> notices", e.g.):
>
> https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2012/ManagingCopyrightInformation.html
>
>> It seems to me that at most a modification to an existing quagga file
>> should says is "Portions Copyright...."
>> My personal (and company's) approach is to add no new statement on
>> files we modify, and to add a Copyright statement on files we create
>> without derivative content. (See bgp_encap.c for an example of a file
>> we created *with* significant derivative content.)
>>
>> So my question is:
>> What's the right answer?
> The SFLC doc suggests it is fine to add "Copyright ..." strings when
> modifying a file with copyrightable updates (and the bar on what is
> copyrightable is _extremely_ low; as I read elsewhere "Happy Birthday"
> is copyrightable, even though it was identical to an earlier song, bar 3
> obvious words).
>
>> - Adding an unqualified Copyright following
>> http://patchwork.quagga.net/patch/1800/
>> - Adding "Portions Copyright ..."
>> - Treating all modifications as Derivative Works and non-copyrightable
>> - Requiring a new file for any new Copyrighted material
>> - Something else
>>
>> I think at very least, the Copyright statement above and HACKING.md
>> should be modified to say Portions...
> An issue I have with _now_ adding "Portions..." to new claims would be
> that there are existing "Copyright..." strings that don't have that that
> may also be "Portions". I wouldn't have the energy to go research every
> one of them to try determine the status of each. It might not even be
> possible to do so for any that were made pre-git (certainly, GNU Zebra
> CVS meta-data is gone - even while zebra.org CVS was still online,
> running CVS2git conversions on it would give errors, there seemed to be
> corruption in the CVS meta-data).
>
> The end result would be that we'd have some with "Portions" and some
> without, and it'd be confusing.
>
> Perhaps instead we could just document more generally that "Copyright"
> strings are non-exclusive, and need only apply to portions?
>
>> Does anyone else care/have an opinion? (If not, I'll submit a patch to
>> HACKING.md adding the word "Portions".)
> I think it's always good to make things more clear, and enhance shared
> understandings. I'm just wondering if there are other solutions, as
> "Portions" on some could of itself add ambiguity, through contrast.
>
> regards,
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