Re: [Perlunit-devel] update and copyrights question

[<le...@ai...>]

Piers Cawley <pdc...@bo...> writes:

> 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 currently have copyrights, licenses, and out of date author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. 

I give my consent entirely to the idea of making everything copyright
the PerlUnit Dev Team.

> 
> > 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. 
> 

Also totally OK by me.

> Any new files would be
> 
> Copyright (c) 2000- The PerlUnit Dev Team.
> 
> Not sure how this stacks up legally though.

I really don't know about the legal status of a sourceforge group.
But surely this issue has been tackled before. I'd vote for a look at
some major sourceforge group efforts, and see what they do.

The Perl approach mentioned above also has its merits, mainly that the
copyright is (1) attributable to a single defined legal person and (2)
still the work is attributed to the whole of the persons that have
contributed. For a pragmatic short term solution, this might be the
way to go. 

Christian

> 
> -- 
> 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?
> 
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