Re: Gnuplot concerns

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Daniel J Sebald wrote:

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

Formally, they did.  Well, one of them at least.  Every release in the 
last 10 years has been personally "blessed" by Mr. Williams himself.

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

In my experience, (American) law and "making sense" are mutually 
exclusive concepts ;-(

 > to be something like
> 
> Copyright 1986 - 1993, 1998  Thomas Williams, Colin Kelly
> Copyright 2004  Gnuplot Developer Group

That would be quite impossible, because there is no legal entity called 
the "Gnuplot Developer Group" to which that 2004 copyright could 
possibly long. Moreover, the original authors could never have signed 
over copyright to this non-existing entity.