Paste: Proposed changes to license notification language

Author: elasticdog
Mode: text
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:26:42
Plain Text |
*** REASONS FOR KEEPING IN-FILE COPYRIGHT NOTICES ***

The Berne Convention regarding collective works and individual copyrights for
distinct works included within
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P90_12435
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    (5) Collections of literary or artistic works such as encyclopaedias and
    anthologies which, by reason of the selection and arrangement of their
    contents, constitute intellectual creations shall be protected as such,
    without prejudice to the copyright in each of the works forming part of
    such collections.
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Clarification of Berne law - http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl104.html
More on advantages to having individual notices for distinct works -
    http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Copyright_notice#Contributions_to_Collective_Works


GNU Policies for Copyright Notices
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html
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    But if contributors are not all assigning their copyrights to a single
    copyright holder, it can easily happen that one file has several copyright
    holders. Each contributor of nontrivial text is a copyright holder.

    In that case, you should always include a copyright notice in the name of
    main copyright holder of the file. You can also include copyright notices
    for other copyright holders as well, and this is a good idea for those who
    have contributed a large amount and for those who specifically ask for
    notices in their names. (Sometimes the license on code that you copy in may
    require preserving certain copyright notices.) But you don't have to
    include a notice for everyone who contributed to the file (which would be
    rather inconvenient).

    Sometimes a program has an overall copyright notice that refers to the
    whole program. It might be in the README file, or it might be displayed
    when the program starts up. This copyright notice should mention the year
    of completion of the most recent major version; it can mention years of
    completion of previous major versions, but that is optional.
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*** EXAMPLES OF POLICIES FOR VARIOUS LICENSE APPLICATIONS ***

How the Apache license should be applied
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt
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     APPENDIX: How to apply the Apache License to your work.

        To apply the Apache License to your work, attach the following
        boilerplate notice, with the fields enclosed by brackets "[]"
        replaced with your own identifying information. (Don't include
        the brackets!)  The text should be enclosed in the appropriate
        comment syntax for the file format. We also recommend that a
        file or class name and description of purpose be included on the
        same "printed page" as the copyright notice for easier
        identification within third-party archives.

     Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

     Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
     you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
     You may obtain a copy of the License at

         http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

     Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
     distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
     WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
     See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
     limitations under the License.
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How the Eclipse Public License should be applied
http://www.eclipse.org/legal/copyrightandlicensenotice.php
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    For EPL projects, the notice template is:

    /*******************************************************************************
     * Copyright (c) {DATE} {INITIAL COPYRIGHT OWNER} {OTHER COPYRIGHT OWNERS}.
     * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
     * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
     * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
     * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
     *
     * Contributors:
     *    {INITIAL AUTHOR} - initial API and implementation
     *******************************************************************************/
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GPL Application Howto
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html
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    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 3 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 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
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How the Sun Public License should be applied
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/sunpublic.php
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    Exhibit A -Sun Public License Notice.

        The contents of this file are subject to the Sun Public License Version
        1.0 (the License); you may not use this file except in compliance with
        the License. A copy of the License is available at http://www.sun.com/
        The Original Code is _________________. The Initial Developer of the
        Original Code is ___________. Portions created by ______ are Copyright
        (C)_________. All Rights Reserved.  Contributor(s):
        ______________________________________.  Alternatively, the contents of
        this file may be used under the terms of the _____ license (the ?[___]
        License?), in which case the provisions of [______] License are
        applicable instead of those above.  If you wish to allow use of your
        version of this file only under the terms of the [____] License and not
        to allow others to use your version of this file under the SPL,
        indicate your decision by deleting the provisions above and replace
        them with the notice and other provisions required by the [___]
        License. If you do not delete the provisions above, a recipient may use
        your version of this file under either the SPL or the [___] License.
        [NOTE: The text of this Exhibit A may differ slightly from the text of
        the notices in the Source Code files of the Original Code. You should
        use the text of this Exhibit A rather than the text found in the
        Original Code Source Code for Your Modifications.]
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How the Mozilla Public License should be applied
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mozilla1.1.php
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EXHIBIT A -Mozilla Public License.

      ``The contents of this file are subject to the Mozilla Public License
      Version 1.1 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
      compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

      http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/

      Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
      basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
      License for the specific language governing rights and limitations under
      the License.

      The Original Code is ______________________________________.

      The Initial Developer of the Original Code is ________________________.
      Portions created by

      ______________________ are Copyright (C) ______
      ______________________.
      All Rights Reserved.

      Contributor(s): ______________________________________.

      Alternatively, the contents of this file may be used under the terms
      of the _____ license (the  [___] License), in which case the provisions
      of [______] License are applicable  instead of those above.
      If you wish to allow use of your version of this file only under the terms
      of the [____] License and not to allow others to use your version of this
      file under the MPL, indicate your decision by deleting  the provisions
      above and replace  them with the notice and other provisions required
      by the [___] License.  If you do not delete the provisions above,
      a recipient may use your version of this file under either the MPL or the
      [___] License."
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*** PROPOSED WORDING CHANGES FOR FUTURE FACTOR COPYRIGHT/LICENSE NOTICES ***

! Copyright (c) 2009 Slava Pestov. All rights reserved.
! The contents of this file are licensed under the Simplified BSD License
! A copy of the license is available at http://factorcode.org/license.txt

...where "Slava Pestov" would be the contributing author's name. We should be
specific with the version of the BSD license we're using to prevent ambiguity
on whether we are using a 2-, 3-, or 4-clause variation of the BSD license
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html) and the "Simplified BSD License" is
the official term for our variant as specified by the Open Source Initiative
(http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php).



*** PROPOSED MINOR CHANGES FOR FACTOR COPYRIGHT NOTICE ***

--
Copyright (c) 2003-2009, Slava Pestov and contributing authors
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
   this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
   this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
   and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
DEVELOPERS AND CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS;
OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
--


This just alters the current "Slava Pestov and friends" to be more specific
and also adds the "All rights reserved." which is in the license template and
not technically necessary for members of the Berne Union, but internationally
might be beneficial if a case of infringement ever were to come up (however
unlikely). There is also no conflict by having the two copyright notices (the
ones in the file headers and this main license.txt) since the repository of
code would be considered as a collective work as mentioned above.

Annotation: forgot to mention

Author: elasticdog
Mode: text
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:34:13
Plain Text |
I forgot to mention that the current header does not indicate specifically that the code in the file is actually under the BSD license, it merely points to it and it implicit with its meaning:

! Copyright (c) 2009 Slava Pestov.
! See http://factorcode.org/license.txt for BSD license.

That is fixed to be in line with other common license notifications by providing the specific version of the license used, and a link to a copy of the license.

Annotation: my thoughts

Author: doublec
Mode: factor
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:34:20
Plain Text |
I don't think the license.txt file should have a copyright notice in it. This just confuses the issue. If you want an 'overall project copyright' then it should go in the README or similar file.

Annotation: I Prefer the MIT/X11 Licence

Author: George Rogers
Mode: text
Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 21:33:13
Plain Text |
I think that license has better wording than the BSD License.

New Annotation

Summary:
Author:
Mode:
Body: