On Tue, 23 Feb 2016, Lou Berger wrote:
With my Quagga hat on, if someone contributes something and feels a need
to add "their" copyright claim, I usually'd have no reason to not put it
through.
Sure, but I'd hope you'd block someone adding a copyright statement on
others work.
Only if it was 100% clear they could have nothing to have copyright over
in the file they were adding the string to.
Remember, the "Copyright..." string of itself doesn't affect any
copyright claims one way or another. It's just documentation, allowing
someone to say:
"FWIW, just to help you, I happen to think I have a Copyright interest
in this file"
So if someone thinks that, I'd encourage them to document it by adding
the string. If it seemed they had to be mistaken I'd only /query/ it -
but if they still believed they had a claim, I'd still add it - it'd be
documenting the reality of what they believe after all.
Whether their belief in their claim is right or wrong isn't really
something I can decide. However, so long as they have they that belief
and it's not disproven, their "Copyright ..." string would be somewhat
consistent with reality?
We havn't though had much of a problem with people adding notices when
they shouldn't though. The problem is more the reverse.
Why is that a problem? As you say above, it's their choice.
Hmm, I'd rather err on the side of documenting copyright holders than
not, in a more durable way than SCM meta-data.
Once information is lost, it's lost for ever.
I see no reason to take a position one way or another. If someone
doesn't want to add a copyright, it's their choice. If they do, it's
also their choice as long as they don't copyright someone else's work.
Thinking about this on the way home yesterday, the original issue that
made you think about this was that I added a copyright string as part of
an update of a file, and the lack of other "Copyright" strings of other
authors might make it seem like the string I added was the only
copyright claim or exclusive, or whatever.
So the issue was that "Copyright" strings for modifications could cause
confusion about the scope, right? How about we focus on that and just
say for modifications, it should be prefaced with "Portions:\n"? Also
use "may" instead of "are encouraged". ??
From f2e489120173f14ba2f5e429c9414e973c2de87b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Jakma <paul.ja...@hpe.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 12:45:31 +0000
Subject: HACKING: Document how to add standard copyright claims to files
* (REQUIRED READING) Copyright claims may be documented in the standard way,
with a "Copyright ..." line near the beginning of the file.
diff --git a/HACKING.md b/HACKING.md
index 7a5d973..fe58b4f 100644
--- a/HACKING.md
+++ b/HACKING.md
@@ -50,6 +50,15 @@ be _explicitly_ stated with the contribution. A
"Signed-off-by" line is
_not_ sufficient. The "Signed-off-by" line is not used by the Quagga
project.
+You may document 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]
+
+When adding such claims for modifications to an existing file, please
+preface the claim with "Portions: " on a line before it.
+
GUIDELINES FOR HACKING ON QUAGGA {#sec:guidelines}
================================
regards,
--
Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org @pjakma Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as
artificial flowers have to flowers.
-- David Parnas
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