gpl header copyright bugfix for my old contributions ready to be?merged

[Michael Tautschnig]

Hi all,

I've just seen similar issues in the logwatch project; well, actually things are
a lot worse, but anyway: In the following, I'm only expressing my very personal
opinion and don't mean to insult anyone.

> On Wednesday 11 June 2008 15:44, Henning Sprang wrote:
> > Finding a general rule how and when people deserve being mentioned in
> > the copyright file to avoid complications in the future, is interesting
> > and important.
> 
> Those rules exist. They are written down in copyright laws.
> 
Indeed, these do exist, even though probably few of us will really have a
profound understanding of them.

> > Before discussing it here in depth, we should probably look at how other
> > projects deal with such a topic, and, most important, we should agree
> > that we do not request Thomas to do all this for all past contributions,
> > but only in the future
> 
> If Henning demands to be mentioned, either his demand has to be fulfilled or 
> the code has to be removed.
>
[...]

I think I need to second this one. Lawyers probably could fight some minor
patches, but other than that, the copyright is always with the contributor,
unless they have given it away through some kind of written permission. (In the
GCC project, all contributors are required to sign such a document to get their
code integrated.) 

Assuming that Henning (and nobody else) has ever done so for FAI, the copyright
remains with the original author. I thus think that the least that must be done
is respecting Hennings copyright-requests. Of course, (sorry, Henning) we
herewith assume that his claims are correct.

IMHO, the completely correct approach would surely be to add copyright
statements for all other contributions as well, but presumeably 
- most authors don't care, partly because
- most contributions other than Henning's may be considered "minor", and thus
- these missing copyright statements won't cause serious legal trouble.

What I'd suggest is the following: Incorporate Henning's readymade
copyright-patches _now_. For one thing, because Henning has done and is still
doing a great job, and second because this seems to be the only proper way to
proceed.

In the future, we might come to some agreement like "patches changing less than
10 lines are considered minor." We should probably help Thomas by proposing some
viable rules, because after all he has the burden of doing the legal stuff then.
In fact, anybody sending a patch which Thomas intends to accept should have
- clearly stated the license, or rather that they agreed with GPL
- claim or give away copyright

Regular contributors might also want to sign some some piece of paper giving
away the copyright for any future contributions (no idea, whether this is legal
at all...), so simplify this kind of paperwork.

Well, that's just my very personal opinion, feel free to flame or ignore.

Best,
Michael







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