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freetds - Re: [freetds] windows installer copyright

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  • From: brian AT bruns.com
  • To: freetds AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Cc: freetds AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [freetds] windows installer copyright
  • Date: Sun, 09 May 2004 08:35:26 -0700 (PDT)

On Sat, 8 May 2004 09:44:18 -0700, Steve Kirkendall wrote:


> > Steve, if you don't want the copyright for this, you may wish to
> assign it
> > to Brian or simply place it in the public domain. Your file, your
> work,
> > your choice.
>
> Okay, how do I assign the copyright to Brian?
>

I'd prefer people to keep their copyrights. Some projects do a lot of
copyright assignment (GNU) but I like the Linux model better, it makes
sure I don't get any draconian ideas. ;-)

However, the copyright on the .rc file and related files should have
your name in the comments section of that file, so someone looking at
the file sees that that particular file is copyrighted by you. For
exported symbols (which I assume there's some way of interrogating
these fields after the package is installed?), you are making a
copyright statement for the packages as a whole.

So perhaps it should say something like "Copyright (c) 1998-2004 Brian
Bruns, et al." or something like that. I don't really care if my name
is on the marque, but somethings got to go there. As far as I know, I
still own over 50% of the code in the project (although that number is
dwindling over time) so "et al" (and others) should cover that.

I don't really think we want to get into "Copyright (c) 1998-2004
Brian Bruns, James Lowden, Bill Thompson (or is it Merrill Lynch?),
Frediano Ziglio, ..., et al." unless the other contributors desire
that. I have no problem with it, just a matter of style.

Perhaps the other major contributors want to vote on the value of
brevity vs. attribution in this particular field, I'll go with the
majority. If we were a bigger project we'd create a non-profit to
hold the copyrights in perpetuity. My wife just went through getting
a tax id number for her non-profit; it doesn't look that difficult,
really. Then we could say "Copyright (c) 1998-2004 The FreeTDS
Project, et al." Just a thought.


Brian




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