Re: [boost] Copyright-less licence references

Subject: Re: [boost] Copyright-less licence references
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-09-15 18:23:01

On Wednesday 16 September 2015 00:21:30 Peter Dimov wrote:
> Gennadiy Rozental wrote:
> > Can you tell me why you yourself do not follow this advice? I do not see
> > you updating copyright statements.
> 
> I do update them from time to time. :-)
> 
> > Let's take any file with your copyright (do not take this personally - it
> > is just an example). For example interlocked.hpp:
> > 
> > You have Copyright 2005 Peter Dimov.
> > 
> > This supposedly says that you started to work on this file in 2005 (which
> > is indeed true) and you hold the copyright on content of this file ever
> > since, right?
> > 
> > Few questions:
> > 
> > 1. Why is it not "Copyright 2005-2015 Peter Dimov."
> > 2. I see quite a lot of changes made since 2005. Does your disclaimer
> > automatically make you hold a copyright to these lines since 2005 even
> > though changes were made let's say 2012?
> 
> I automatically hold the copyright for everything I author, regardless of
> whether I include a proper copyright assignment at the top, but it depends
> on the jurisdiction and having the lines at the top is considered a good
> practice. That's my opinion though and I'm not a lawyer.
> 
> > 3. I see few other people made significant changes to this file. Why don't
> > we have a Copyright disclaimers for all of them?
> 
> It's up to those people to add a line if they so decide. Copyright only
> covers expressions of creativity. If someone makes changes to a file but
> doesn't feel that these changes are original enough, he can decide to not
> claim copyright. Sometimes people err on the side of not claiming copyright
> out of modesty. Sometimes other people claim copyright for changes that
> deserve none.
> 
> > > in 2017, but you can't remove the existing lines.
> > 
> > Why?
> 
> Well you obviously can do whatever you like, it's just not considered good
> practice.
> 
> > 1. Why I can't change my own copyright to this?
> 
> You can in principle assign your copyright to some other person or a legal
> entity, in which case, you could legitimately go and change everything to
> match, but why would you do that?
> 
> > 2. Why I can't change Raffi's copyright to this if he formally agrees to
> > this?
> 
> You could, but why?
> 
> > 3. Let's say someone had a copyright line introduced few years ago. And I
> > removed lined which were authored by that person. Do I need to keep
> > copyright?
> 
> Not in principle, but this is a gray area because one might argue that
> editions made later have been influenced by the creative ideas embodied in
> that person's lines and so constituting a derived work.

There is one other thing to consider. If one day, say in 2017, Boost.Test gets 
a new active contributor John Doe, how would you attribute work of his in the 
copyright notices? The current set of Boost.Test contributors is Gennadiy and 
Raffi, and by 2017 you'll have "Copyright 2015-2017 Boost.Test contributors" 
all over the code. Would you silently include John into this set and somehow 
attribute the prior work to him? And what if John refuses to be included?

I think Peter made a very good point that these "Boost.Test contributors" has 
to be a legal entity, and every contributor has to explicitly give up his 
rights to this entity. Usually this is done by signing a CLA. To my knowledge, 
neither Boost nor Boost.Test is governed by such entity, so there's no body 
you could release your rights to. But frankly, even if there was, signing a 
CLA is starting to smell fishy to me.

This reminds me. Recently I updated README.md in a few libraries I work on to 
include a notice that patch contributors implicitly agree to release their 
modifications under BSL [1][2][3]. Should these notes be added to all 
libraries or even on the main website or am I being paranoid?

[1]: https://github.com/boostorg/core
[2]: https://github.com/boostorg/log
[3]: https://github.com/boostorg/atomic