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#100 Please update copyright info in README.txt
README.txt currently reads:
Credits:
TkDiff is Copyright (C) 1994-2005 by John M. Klassa.
Many of the toolbar icons were created by Dean S. Jones and used with his
permission. The icons have the following copyright:Copyright(C) 1998 by Dean S. Jones
dean@gallant.com
Could you update the list of copyright holders? I think it should read like this:
Copyright (C) 1998 Bryan Oakley oakley@channelpoint.com
Copyright (C) 1994-2006 by John M. Klassa.
Copyright (C) 2004-2025 Dorothy Robinson ("dorothyr")
Copyright (C) 2012 by badukaire
Copyright (C) 2017-2025 by vampm
https://sourceforge.net/p/tkdiff/
TIA, cu Andreas
Not entirely certain of the rules (if any) governing this. While Bryan was clearly a major force in the early days of the tool and has contributed much - not only in actual code, but even an IDEA that I subsequently utilized FAR LATER, and thus is clearly a missing attribution (as is Dorothy, who presided longer than anyone, over uncounted modifications by my reckoning); yet badukaire (according to my records) contributed a patch (not in 2012, but 2005?) which then languished until I joined in 2017!!
It was never released but was REWRITTEN by myself (for technical reasons) before ever being "published", at least by MY definition of that word (publicly available - as opposed to internally)! I can find other patch contributors NOT mentioned in your recommendation; even one (a Kevin X.) whose topic of contribution is STRANGELY similar to that of badukaire (again never "published", but perhaps spurred-on badukaire, or vice-versa -- still ALL internally and under the purvey of Dorothy)?
The upshot here is what might you be looking for as pertains to an updated Copyright list?
My understanding of the word is, of that which was written, it in turn represents and is considered the work of they who 'published' it. I can easily put names in a list and SAY "these" are "them"; even badukaire! And I am more than happy to comply with your request, but I suppose I'd ask "to what end?" And - at what point are YOU suggesting that "published" occurred, or should anyone ever having contributed at all BE considered such?
And NO, I'm not a lawyer, just someone who believes words (and intentions) matter. Open source software is an odd animal in that access is granted to all who participate. As such, the notions of "publicly" and particularly Copyright, ordinarily conveying some system of "rights", are problematic at best. I suppose I'd just like to understand the "Why". Legal standing is already conveyed by the License, which admittedly stipulates that any Copyright notice not be removed, but passes no mention of what such retention is to provide or protect, not already spelled out by the license itself. But I'm willing to learn....
A correct list of copyright holders serves at least two important purposes:
Relicensing is impossible if the copyright holders are not known and cannot be contacted to give their permission to relicense. It is also hard to enforce a license if the actual authors are not known.
Attribution: IMHO it is just a matter of basic politeness to state whom the users might be grateful to. e.g. I recently was made aware over at tkrev/tkcvs that the original author was quite unhappy with Debian because he was/is not (yet) attributed in the "copyright"-file of Debian package. On the flipside tkrev also did not make this info easily available, so downstream distributions cannot get it right. I would like to do it right, and also give proper kudos to the tkdiff authors in the tkrev/tkdiff Debian package.
Understood, and thank you for the followup. As a "relative" neophyte to contributing to the FOSS world, I appreciate the mentoring toward 'accepted practices'. There is a new version in the works (owing to a recent upgrade to a major Tcl/Tk release) and I assure you the Copyright information will be updated at that time.
I'm not sure I (dorothy robinson) really deserve a copyright here. I did act as interim mantainer for, well, a fairly long interim, but I mostly just tweaked the user interface and command parsing a little bit, and accepted some patches.
Last edit: DorothyR 2025-06-24
Hello,
sorry in hindsight I see that my report should have been more verbose:
I looked at the licenses/copyright info and found that it obviously had not seen any update for 20 years while SVN showed more than 150 changes after that. That could not be right.
Looking over the commiters I saw that their number was small (no one-commit authors) and therefore suggested the list above. I did not do a full in depth review.
I am no lawyer either but the FSF site has some guidance where the bar for a copyright relevant change is. https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant
Could you please update the FSF address (URL instead of outdated postal one) as per adjusted patch?
(LICENSE.txt refreshed from https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt )
Original issue has been addressed via new Release (Version 6.0)
Unfortunately the recently appended request arrived too late to be included, and will be addressed shortly, but staged for the NEXT release (whenever that may occur).
Small question however - is the former Snail-Mail address INCORRECT or simply no longer en' vogue?
No worries, this is a beautification fix. ;-)
According to https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/ the FSF indeed is no longer located at Temple Place.
Revised License information has been incorporated
As promised, the update to remove the incorrect Mailing address for FSF, in favor of their URL has been committed, staged to take effect on whatever next operation (fix/release) will occur.