[Scummvm-devel] Headers: Copyright and description.

[Jonathan Gray]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 01:26:03AM +0100, Max Horn wrote:
> 
> 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...

No this does not infer transfer of copyright.  This is common practice
in projects that deal with multiple people working on code across
large periods of time.

> 
> 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.

Per file basis would be best...

> 
> We need a lawyer ;-)

Ick :)