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

From: williamkempf_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-11-29 14:25:57

--- In boost_at_y..., Sean Parent <sparent_at_a...> wrote:
> on 11/29/01 10:23 AM, williamkempf_at_h... at williamkempf_at_h...
> 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)"?

Ahhh... now I see the full use of the tags.  You don't want to have 
to open the files and read the pertinent info, you want an automated 
grep tool to pull out the entire copyright.  Not unreasonable.  The 
SGML type tags have to be out, IMHO, because of HTML issues.  I also 
don't really care for the paren type tags, but I don't have a better 
suggestion.

> > 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.

My goal was to reduce the copyright notice to as little as needed to 
indicate copyright.  License requirements would then be referred to 
either through reference to a shared Boost license, or to the local 
license.txt file (I believe this to be legally binding, but I'm no 
lawyer).  This should, I think, at least allow for rapid tentative 
approval by legal departments, if they can trust in the peer review 
process to catch misuses of this "standard".
 
> 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.

I'm not sure this is true, provided we have a typical Boost license.  
But then again, I'm not a legal type.

Bill Kempf