[LAD] forking (was Re: Aeolus)

[Fred Gleason]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 2:05 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons at linuxaudio.org> wrote:

> There is world of difference (also legally) between
> 
>    "Copyright (c) xxxxxx'
> 
> and
> 
>    "Additional code/modifications by xxxxx"


On Sep 19, 2013, at 17:22 03, J. Liles wrote:

> Fons, I've been around the free-software block a time or two and I have to say I have never *once* encountered the latter form of notation. Adding a Copyright (c) line with dates is the standard practice, but (obviously?) only to files that have actually been altered significantly. Anyone interested (even those weasely lawyers) can run a diff against the two codebases to see what was actually changed. 

FWIW, I have come across both notations in the wild, and have even done (been guilty of?) both practices myself.  Personally, I would certainly never add a copyright notice to a file to which I had made no substantive change, but I have done so on files to which I have made significant modifications (being careful to preserve the original attributions and copyright notice(s) in the process).

So it would seem that this may be a gray area.  My own inclination therefore would be to cut the "offenders" some slack.  We were all new at this at one point or another -- it'd be a shame to see one's work closed down over something like this.

Cheers!


|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. |               Chief Developer               |
|                           |               Paravel Systems               |
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|  A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many  |
|  bad measures.                                                          |
|                                         -- Daniel Webster               |
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