#160 License (and copyright) clarification

[Andreas Metzler]

Hello,

I am currently pondering upgrading the version of tkcvs shipped with Debian. Due to the name change this would need to go through "NEW processing" which includes copyright review.

The current version contains a LICENSE.txt (containing of the GPL v2) and a single copyright statement referring for a small part of code copied from Klonedike in tkrev/help.tcl.

The oldest version I could find was 6.0 which basically looked the same, except for even lacking LICENSE.txt, which was added in 7.0.

Debian packages listed these copyright holders:
Copyright (C) 1999-2002 Paul Mackerras. All rights reserved
Copyright (C) 1993,1994 by John Heidemann johnh@ficus.cs.ucla.edu
Copyright (C) 1997,1998 D. Richard Hipp
Copyright (C) 1994-2005 by John M. Klassa.
Copyright (C) 1999-2001 by AccuRev Inc.
Copyright(C) 1998 by Dean S. Jones
Copyright (C) 1998-2005 Bryan Oakley

and listed the license as GPL 2 (no "or later" clause).

I would add Copyright (C) 2004-2025 Dorothy Robinson to this list.

Did we miss anything?

[Del]

Hi,

Yes you are missing something.

As the original author of tkCVS (back in 1992 or so), I was "informed" by the Debian team that the GPL v2 license would be added to the package and that since this was a license addition by the Debian team that they would no longer recognise me as the copyright holder or author of the package and that they would be henceforth the owner of the package (that I wrote and contributed to the public domain).

At that point I then asked the Debian team leads to exclude tkCVS from that and future versions of Debian until and unless I was recognised as the original author. This has not, as far as I'm aware, ever been done. I spoke personally to one of the Debian leads and he assured me that tkCVS was to be excluded from Debian because he could not get agreement from the rest of the Debian team to add my name back into the package.

Dorothy as the current maintainer of tkREV may have different views, however having checked the tkREV source code recently I can still see that it contains code and structure that I originally developed. It's been through a lot of hands since I originally developed it, and I don't know a lot of people on your list, but if the package originates code that I originally developed then I should at least be credited as one of the authors.

If you're not going to at least recognise the original author of the tkCVS software in the Debian package then please do not include tkCVS in Debian, at all.

Del

[Andreas Metzler]

Del wrote

If you're not going to at least recognise the original author of the tkCVS software in the Debian package then please do not include tkCVS in Debian, at all.

Hello Del,
this is now fixed in Debian/unstable and the fix should also make it into the next Debian stable release (version 13 aka trixie).
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/tkcvs/-/blob/master/debian/copyright?ref_type=heads
(I have also made some progress updating to newer upstream.)
cu Andreas

[Del]

Hi,

Yes you are missing something.

As the original author of tkCVS (back in 1992 or so), I was "informed"
by the Debian team that the GPL v2 license would be added to the package
and that since this was a license addition by the Debian team that they
would no longer recognise me as the copyright holder or author of the
package and that they would be henceforth the owner of the package (that
I wrote and contributed to the public domain).

At that point I then asked the Debian team leads to exclude tkCVS from
that and future versions of Debian until and unless I was recognised as
the original author. This has not, as far as I'm aware, ever been done.
I spoke personally to one of the Debian leads and he assured me that
tkCVS was to be excluded from Debian because he could not get agreement
from the rest of the Debian team to add my name back into the package.

Dorothy as the current maintainer of tkREV may have different views,
however having checked the tkREV source code recently I can still see
that it contains code and structure that I originally developed. It's
been through a lot of hands since I originally developed it, and I don't
know a lot of people on your list, but if the package originates code
that I originally developed then I should at least be credited as one of
the authors.

If you're not going to at least recognise the original author of the
tkCVS software in the Debian package then please do not include tkCVS in
Debian, at all.

Del

On 6/22/25 15:23, Andreas Metzler wrote:

---

**[bugs:#160] https://sourceforge.net/p/tkcvs/bugs/160/ License (and
copyright) clarification **

Status: open
Group:
Created: Sun Jun 22, 2025 08:23 AM UTC by Andreas Metzler
Last Updated: Sun Jun 22, 2025 08:23 AM UTC
Owner: nobody

Hello,

I am currently pondering upgrading the version of tkcvs shipped with
Debian. Due to the name change this would need to go through "NEW
processing" which includes copyright review.

The current version contains a LICENSE.txt (containing of the GPL v2)
and a single copyright statement referring for a small part of code
copied from Klonedike in tkrev/help.tcl.

The oldest version I could find was 6.0 which basically looked the
same, except for even lacking LICENSE.txt, which was added in 7.0.

Debian packages listed these copyright holders:
Copyright (C) 1999-2002 Paul Mackerras. All rights reserved
Copyright (C) 1993,1994 by John Heidemann johnh@ficus.cs.ucla.edu
Copyright (C) 1997,1998 D. Richard Hipp
Copyright (C) 1994-2005 by John M. Klassa.
Copyright (C) 1999-2001 by AccuRev Inc.
Copyright(C) 1998 by Dean S. Jones
Copyright (C) 1998-2005 Bryan Oakley

and listed the license as GPL 2 (no "or later" clause).

I would add Copyright (C) 2004-2025 Dorothy Robinson to this list.

Did we miss anything?

---

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[Andreas Metzler]

Thanks Del for the quick response and sorry for poking an open wound. Hopefully we can improve things in the future.

Digging into histories the earliest Debian (or upstream) package I found was 6.0-9 from 1998 (which as noted above even lacked a LICENSE.txt ), then debian/copyright already said:
Copyright: GPL, according to the author of TkCVS, Del del@babel.matra.com.au

Well, let's see if Dorothy has some input here.

[DorothyR]

What, now?? I was completely unaware of all of this. I wondered why Debian never updated their version, but I had no idea there had been a dispute. Del is the original author, as is still proclaimed in the "About" text. He should be the first copyright holder.

dorothy

[DorothyR]

Another contributor I recall is Mike Jagdis (jaggy?), who rewrote the branch diagram a long time ago. In the upcoming release, there's a module by Michael Moran (vampm) to deal with file paths containing a tilde in tk9.0. He maintains tkdiff now, and I'm holding back releasing tkrev until he finishes his update. Unfortunately my logs now only go back to 2005, when we migrated from CVS to SVN. I'm a crappy archivist.

[Andreas Metzler]

The missing Debian package update is unrelated (maintainer fell off the grid).

I do not think this is too impossible to resolve, afaiui you as current main contributor and Dan have a food working relationship. What is missing is gathering the data and properly documenting the situation. How about adding a new AUTHORS file with a text like this?

TkCVS was originally written by Del <del@babel.matra.com.au> and released as public domain.

In <insert year - was it 2004?> Dorothy Robinson took over maintainership.
TKCVS was re-licensed und the GPL v2 (or later)

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
    with this program; if not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

TkCVS was renamed to TKRev in 2020 (version 9.4).

List of copyright holders for tkrev (excluding contrib and tkdiff
subdirectories)
????-???? Del <del@babel.matra.com.au>
1993,1994 John Heidemann >johnh@ficus.cs.ucla.edu>
???? [probably 1998]-2025 Dorothy Robinson


The tkdiff subdirectory contains a copy of tkdiff
https://sourceforge.net/p/tkdiff - See its README.txt for copyright/license
information.

Looking at 6.0 README.tkcvs and current CHANGELOG.txt these are other possible copyright holders. I do not know how substantial their contribution was. The relevant ones should be added with the respective year info.
[tkCVS release 5]
Jeremy Harker harkerj@ttc.com
Eugene Lee, Aerospace Corporation. gene@mars.aero.org
[tkCVS release 4]
Carl Staelin staelin@info.hpl.hp.com
Uwe Graichen graichen@bln.sel.alcatel.de
Matthias Schade mascha@mt.e-technik.uni-kassel.de
Steven Jowers jowers@pat.mdc.com
Release 6.1.a1
M.E. Smith
Release 6.1.a4
Christoph Jaeschke
Release 6.1.a5
Christoph Jaeschke
Release 6.1.a7
Jo Wahle
Stephen Kick
Release 6.3.b1
Andrew Johnson
Marcel Koelewijn
Release 7.1
2002 Mike Jagdis
2002 Laurent Duperval
2002 John Lash
2002 John Cerney
Release 8.2.1
2010 Steve Schwarm

In addition to that the files in contrib should get inline license/copyright statements
contrib/cvsdiff: Has author info without year and no license
contrib/tkdirdiff: has copyright statement and license info, it is unclear how it differs from dirdiff https://www.samba.org/ftp/paulus/
contrib/tksvn2bcompare.pl: Lacks any copyright/license info. Was contributed in 2010 by Adam McLaurin
contrib/vendorcode.sh: contrib/vendorcode.sh

cu Andreas

[DorothyR]

Del, how do you want your copyright entry to look? I never did learn your last name.

[Del]

Hi all,

My full name is "David Elson" but since I went to a school with 9 Davids in the same class, I've been "Del" ever since.

del@babel.matra.com.au is an address that hasn't existed since the 1990s. Change that to del@babel.com.au and we're all good.

[Andreas Metzler]

Hello Dorothy,
thanks for the work in progress in SVN.

Did you get the copyright holders listed below from a different source or did you copy them over from the Debian-list in my original posting? I intentionally left them out in my proposal https://sourceforge.net/p/tkcvs/bugs/160/#0cf9 since I only found references to their work in tkdiff or contrib subdirectories and the list we are trying to build here excludes those:

contrib/tkdirdiff
- Paul Mackerras
tkdiff
- John M. Klassa.
- D. Richard Hipp
- Bryan Oakley
- Dean S. Jones
- AccuRev Inc.

kind regards Andreas

[DorothyR]

Yes that was more or less a placeholder while I rearranged the deck chairs. I just checked in a better version.

[Andreas Metzler]

Could you please apply the attached patch, using Del's newer address in both places and fixing a typo.

[DorothyR]

Patch applied to AUTHORS.txt