Re: [Perlunit-devel] update and copyrights question

[Piers C. <pdc...@bo...>]

Adam Spiers <ad...@sp...> writes:

> OK, a few more commits gone/going in.  The only one of real interest
> so far is that I renamed Test::Unit to Test::Unit::Procedural, as we
> already planned.
>
> Next up (today with luck) is tackling the 3 class design-related
> issues I mentioned in my last post.  I'm not going to do anything
> which breaks existing API though, just things which improve it.
>
> Another cosmetic issue I'd like to address is a bit delicate.  We
> currently have copyrights, licenses, and out of date author
> attributions in pretty much every file in the distribution.  This is
> messy, and a pain to maintain.  What I would like to see is moving of
> all the copyrights and credits into one or two files (COPYING or
> LICENSE or AUTHORS, say), and then to change the licensing/credit bits
> and pieces in all the other files into something which refers to that
> one file, and also states that none of the files should be distributed
> separately, only as an entire package, thereby preventing the
> copyright-containing file from being disassociated from the others.
> However, I suspect we may need to ask permission from individuals to
> do this, since it would mean reassigning the copyrights of various
> files.  For example, currently TestSuite.pm is (c) Christian, but
> TestLoader.pm is (c) Brian Ewins.  What I'm suggesting would
> presumably make both files copyrighted by the entire group of PerlUnit
> developers past and present.  However, IANAL and I've never really
> thought before about how projects' collective copyrights work.

I like the idea of keeping everything copyright the PerlUnit Dev Team
(or whatever), but I do think we need to get Christian and Brian's
consent. 

> Or maybe it's simpler to keep the existing copyrights, but move all
> the credits into one file.  Then the copyrights can stay as is, and we
> only have one place where we need add credits when people send in
> patches or commit contributions.

I believe Perl itself is copyright Larry as the original author (but
the copyright date keeps extending) and then then have an AUTHORS file
for everyone who's ever submitted a patch. 

I like this approach. Assuming we get the assignment from Christian
and Brian, I assume we could do:

Copyright (c) 199X-2001 Christian Lemburg and Brian Ewins
Modifications Copyright 2001-X The PerlUnit Dev Team. 

Any new files would be

Copyright (c) 2000- The PerlUnit Dev Team.

Not sure how this stacks up legally though.

-- 
Piers

   "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in
    possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite."
         -- Jane Austen?