Re: [boost] Boost License Issues

From: Rene Rivera (grafik666_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-11-25 17:16:25

[2002-11-25] Chris Little wrote:

>on 11/25/02 2:13 PM, Paul A. Bristow at boost_at_[hidden] wrote:
>
>> So should we use
>> "Copyright (c), 2002, A N Author"

Except for the commas, as they are grammatical sugar from the copyright law
perspective.

>> to cover as many countries/lawyers as possible?
>> 
>> But do we need to update the year for each release (perhaps twice a
year?)?
>> 
>> What significance does the year have?
>> 
>
>In our copyright usages we put the date the work was initially written.
>This is important date to include.  If we later modify the work in a
>different year then we would write something like "Copyright ©, 2000-2002,
>.....".

I won't quote more of the book, as that would be unfair use, so I'll
summarize...

The date is important mostly if the copyright is assigned to a corporation
or similar entity. In that case the year is used to determine the length of
the copyright and is either 75 or 100 years from that date. For copyrights
of individuals it's actually simpler to determine the length of the
copyright. It's 50 years in addition the life of the creator, or creators.
And if it's unpublished work, not applicable to Boost, there should be no
date if there is even a copyright notice.

As for changing the date... you should only do that in the case that you
make "substantial" changes to the file/work in which case you can use either
the form: "2000, 2001, 2002" or "2000-2002". And in a rather silly allowance
you can use non Arabic numbers for the dates like Roman numerals,
abbreviations, and spelling out the numbers.

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