[dev] Copyright questions

[Ralf Lang]

Am Mittwoch, 10. August 2011, 20:17:31 schrieb Michael M Slusarz:
> Quoting Michael J Rubinsky <mrubinsk at horde.org>:
> > Quoting Ralf Lang <lang at b1-systems.de>:
> >> Am Mittwoch, 27. Juli 2011, 11:50:44 schrieb Gunnar Wrobel:
> >>> Hi!
> >>> 
> >>> I was wondering a bit about the way we mention copyright in our code.
> >>> 
> >>> We do have copyright notices in most of our files, sometimes PHP
> >>> doclinks as well. and some packages (the applications) offer
> >>> COPYING/LICENSE.
> >>> 
> >>> The copyright statement in the code files usually mention the
> >>> COPYING/LICENSE file that should come with the package. For the
> >>> framework components its is usually not present though.
> >>> 
> >>> And I don't even know if having such copyright statements in the code
> >>> is actually needed. I once read that the COPYING/LICENSE file in a
> >>> package would be enough. The maintenance effort of having maybe only
> >>> two or three links to copyright information would be much lower.
> >>> 
> >>> So I wonder a bit if we can improve the situation. It is at least
> >>> somewhat confusing to me at the moment and if possible I would like to
> >>> get it simpler. Does anybody know what requirements we actually
> >>> see/have in that area? I'm willing to invest a bit of time to find out
> >>> what kind of legal requirements exist but maybe somebody already knows.
> >>> 
> >>> Cheers,
> >>> 
> >>> Gunnar
> >> 
> >> As nobody else jumped on this:
> >> 
> >> I'm really in favor of changing the license headers in the files to:
> >> 
> >> * Copyright 1999-2011 The Horde Project (http://www.horde.org/)
> >> *
> >> * See the enclosed file COPYING for license information (LGPL). If you
> >> did * not receive this file, see
> >> http://opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.php
> >> 
> >> into
> >> 
> >> * Copyright 1999-2011 The Horde Project (http://www.horde.org/)
> >> *
> >> * See http://opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.php
> >> * for license information (LGPL)
> >> 
> >> and dropping the shipped files. As long as the law-savvy agree...
> > 
> > Sounds good to me, though I'm not law-savvy. Though we should change
> > the copyright holder to the LLC while we are making these changes.
> 
> The idea is that you can't guarantee a URL will be accessible in the
> future - thus, the need for distribution of the license in the package.
> 
> On the flip side, you can make the argument that no reasonable person
> would not understand what the LGPL is.
> 
> Either way, it makes more sense to link to a URL that we control.  We
> can always make that URL redirect to an outside site, but it gives us
> control to make sure the license is always correctly available.
> 

Yes, Horde URL are probably better than outside organisation's links.
We didn't yet ship the license files with the libraries, which are separate 
packages as of horde 4 (but told so in the file headers). 

-- 
Ralf Lang
Linux Consultant / Developer

B1 Systems GmbH
Osterfeldstraße 7 / 85088 Vohburg / http://www.b1-systems.de
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