Re: Gnuplot concerns

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Lars Hecking wrote:

>  All files without explicit licensing or copyright information are subject
>  to the gnuplot Copyright terms
> 
>   http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/gnuplot/gnuplot/Copyright?view=auto

One thing that is slightly strange is

 * Copyright 1986 - 1993, 1998, 2004   Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley

I wonder why the copyright of 2004 should be attributed to Williams and Kelly if they were not contributors or didn't oversee development?

I don't know a whole lot of copyright law in the case of derived works, but wouldn't it make more sense to be something like

Copyright 1986 - 1993, 1998  Thomas Williams, Colin Kelly
Copyright 2004  Gnuplot Developer Group

and then have some kind of notice in the license that any third party patches considered an extension and used by the developer group will automatically become copyright by the developer group?

Dan