Re: [LAD] forking (was Re: Aeolus)

From: Fred Gleason <fredg@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Fri Sep 20 2013 - 00:46:42 EEST

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 2:05 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons@email-addr-hidden> wrote:

> There is world of difference (also legally) between
>
> "Copyright (c) xxxxxx'
>
> and
>
> "Additional code/modifications by xxxxx"

On Sep 19, 2013, at 17:22 03, J. Liles wrote:

> Fons, I've been around the free-software block a time or two and I have to say I have never *once* encountered the latter form of notation. Adding a Copyright (c) line with dates is the standard practice, but (obviously?) only to files that have actually been altered significantly. Anyone interested (even those weasely lawyers) can run a diff against the two codebases to see what was actually changed.

FWIW, I have come across both notations in the wild, and have even done (been guilty of?) both practices myself. Personally, I would certainly never add a copyright notice to a file to which I had made no substantive change, but I have done so on files to which I have made significant modifications (being careful to preserve the original attributions and copyright notice(s) in the process).

So it would seem that this may be a gray area. My own inclination therefore would be to cut the "offenders" some slack. We were all new at this at one point or another -- it'd be a shame to see one's work closed down over something like this.

Cheers!

|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer |
| | Paravel Systems |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many |
| bad measures. |
| -- Daniel Webster |
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Received on Fri Sep 20 12:15:02 2013

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