Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Two question which I have to pass on

[Bob Proulx]

Noah Slater wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 02:23:27PM -0700, Bob Proulx wrote:
> >   Don't delete old year numbers, though; they are significant since they

Just to be pedantic, I didn't write that but was only quoting it from
the Copyright-Notices file that we were discussing.
  http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html

> >   indicate when older versions might theoretically go into the public
> >   domain, if the movie companies don't continue buying laws to further
> >   extend copyright.  If you copy a file into the package from some other
> >   program, keep the copyright years that come with the file.
> 
> I don't buy this argument.
> 
> If a software package has a range of years that apply to all files, then from 
> a
> legal standpoint, the current year is the only one you can take into account.
> You could not take one file from the current release GNU Emacs and claim that 
> it
> had gone into the public domain because the first copyright year is listed as
> being over X years ago.
> 
> The older years are of no use because they apply to older versions of the same
> software. Older versions that are not included in the current release, by
> definition. There is no part of that software package that could be used with
> one of the older copyright years.
> ...

I think the clue here is this part "indicate when older versions might
theoretically go into the public domain".  It doesn't indicate that
the current version of the file goes into the public domain.  It only
gives a clue that one could look into the history of the file and find
an older version that might possibly go into the public domain.

> At some point in the future, I have downloaded the most recent release of GNU
> Emacs and I notice that the first year in the 17 line list of years (this is a
> serious issue!) is actually outside of the current copyright limit. So what 
> do I
> do? I certainly can't use any of the software in the current release as if it
> was public domain. Nope, I have to go through the release archives, guessing
> which one might be from that year.  Eventually after some trial an error I 
> will
> find a package which lists that year as the most recent year and I can safely
> assume that this package is now in the public domain.

As I understand it yes it would go something like that but perhaps
without all of the guessing about which year is which year.  Aren't
the old distributions of software projects usually organized a little
better than that?  But in any case as I read it these are only a hint
providing a clear paper trail for legal purposes.

> If you only ever used the most recent year, what difference would that make? I
> would have to do the very same thing! I might wonder to my self if any GNU 
> Emacs
> package is in the public domain, and then I have to perform a manual search 
> as I
> find the actual release that I can use. This is exactly the same process!
> 
> So, not only do I see the current recommendation as buying us nothing, it has
> the very strange side-affect of producing copyright statements that could 
> easily
> take up an entire terminal screen-full. A huge 17 line list of years!

The full license is already quite long.  Incrementally increasing it
in the areas that we see the full list of dates doesn't seem too much
of a hardship.  The long list of dates isn't required to be seen by
the user (e.g. in such locations such as --version output).  So this
shouldn't be a problem of consuming too much screen real estate.  Sure
when looking at a source file we need to page past the file's license
statement.  But we already have to page through the file's license
statement.

Perhaps you could provide an example where the full list
of dates creates a problem?  I am having a hard time thinking of one
and could benefit from the example.  Hoping for a URL into a version
control repository.  Something like: 
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=emacs.git;a=blob;f=src/alloc.c;h=1be5e2b8f1d789c0c94f035aa41a679302be5f2d;hb=HEAD

I am not emotionally attached to this issue but curiousity has me
discussing it.  For a change in the wording of the lawyer's guidelines
I am certainly not the person to convince.

Bob