Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Seth Alan Woolley <seth AT positivism.org>]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 09:03:05AM -0800, Andrew wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 09:27:21AM +0100, Benoit PAPILLAULT wrote:
> > Andrew a ?crit :
> > >Yea, but remember that authorship, ownership, patent holder, copyright
> > >owner, liscensor, and releasor all bear different meanings :) So I dont
> > >think the question is ever about removing authorship its just about who
> > >is the proper copyright owner in this case, they can be the same, but
> > >can also be different. Authorship (IMO) is best left to be described in
> > >ChangeLogs and through revision history.
> > 
> > Yes. That's why I'm not sure about all of this. The worst I've seen is 
> > that GPL'ed software does not imply it's not covered by a patent or 
> > trademark law (see Kaffe, Mozilla, ...).
> > 
> > I just reread the GPL FAQ [1] and it says:
> > 
> > "If several people have helped write the code, use ALL their names. If 
> > you have copied code from other programs covered by the same license, 
> > copy their copyright notices too. Put all the copyright notices 
> > together, right near the top of EACH file."
> 
> I think in this case Source Mage takes the place of the authors names
> as Source Mage is a social entity consisting of all those authors (call
> by reference), but I could be wrong. The policy from above seems to be
> just that.

I would add that the GPL FAQ is not legally binding, either, and the 
ChangeLog should suffice for what the FSF is getting at.

Seth

-- 
Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
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