[Scummvm-devel] Headers: Copyright and description.

Max Horn max at quendi.de
Tue Jan 4 16:27:20 CET 2005


Am 05.01.2005 um 00:18 schrieb Jonathan Gray:

[...]

>> "Original Source Copyright (C) 1994-1998 Revolution Software Ltd.
>> Amendments Copyright (C) 2003-2005 The ScummVM project"
>>
>> Ofcourse we can still change the "Amendments.." bit to something
>> 'better' if anyone has any suggestions.
>
> Isn't the following enough:
>
> Copyright (C) 1994-1998 Revolution Software Ltd.
> Copyright (C) 2003-2005 The ScummVM project
>
> You can figure out which party created the code initially by
> looking at the years involved.

That's true, but it also would imply a full transfer of copyright to 
us, wouldn't it? I am not a lawyer, so I don't know whether that's the 
case; and if it is, whether that might be a problem... or not...

Also, for the other copyright strings: We are indeed inconsistent in 
many ways. For example, we did a lot of code refactoring. So if I take 
code from an old file (e.g. with copyright 2003-2005), and move it into 
a new file, together with brand new code -- should that file be using 
the old copyright text (2003-2005), or just "2005"? OK, in this case, 
you might say: The copyright should cover all the bits in the file, so 
the larger range would be used. But were do we draw the border? 10 
lines of "old" code? More? Less? What about comments? ...
Or shouldn't we handle the copyrights on a per-file basis anyway, but 
rather on a per-module basis? Hrm.

We need a lawyer ;-)


Bye,

Max





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