Re: [boost] Re: Help with legal audit (yes - this is directed to boost!)

From: Sean Parent (sparent_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-11-29 14:12:27

on 11/29/01 10:23 AM, williamkempf_at_[hidden] at williamkempf_at_[hidden]
wrote:

> I don't like this.  These are HTML like tags which will cause
> problems in HTML documentation and will just look silly in code
> comments.  Why not just require either the copyright symbol © or (C)
> (I realize the (C) form has no legal significance, but it also
> doesn't invalidate the copyright statement, is universally (?)
> understood by readers and is easy to grep for).  You can then simply
> search for either of these in the files and find the relevant
> copyright notice.

Okay - any delimeter will do but it needs to mark the beginning and end of
the notice. Finding all instances of the word copyright works now for
finding the notices. But I need a script that can find them, distill a
unique set, and generate a list of deltas from the previous set. So marking
both ends is what would be good. I actually picked XML tags because it would
work well to mark intent for documentation tools but we can pick something
else.

How about: "(begin_copyright) ... (end_copyright)"?

> White space is enough of a delimiter, IMHO.

Okay - if we want to settle on a black line as the end marker, that isn't
currently done. Many of the copyright notices have multiple paragraphs
separated by blank lines.

> I'd go a step further and require a license.txt file for each
> library, UNLESS the library uses a (hypothetical) standard Boost
> license.  A directory tree search for license.txt would then reveal
> all libraries with unique licenses and would allow easy review by
> legal types.

Legal still need to review the copyright notices which need to appear in
every file. The copyright notice is frequently sufficient to not require any
additional license.

Adobe tends to use the "all rights reserved" for the copyright and then
grants a license to use the IP with specific provisions. Forcing folks to
use a license is overkill.

> 
> Bill Kempf
> 
> 
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-- 
Sean Parent
Sr. Computer Scientist II
Advanced Technology Group
Adobe Systems Incorporated
sparent_at_[hidden]