[darcs-devel] [patch704] replace copyright message with module doc

Will Langstroth will at langstroth.com
Wed Jan 25 01:15:05 UTC 2012


>
> I much prefer this to the old one!
>

Good! I'm hoping to do the same thing to the rest of the files, and add a
haddock shell script and so forth.


>  - Shouldn't the maintainer field should be darcs-devel at darcs.net ?
>

I wasn't sure, and while I should have asked first, I figured I could
change it. darcs-devel at darcs.net certainly makes sense, and I can change
the patch to reflect that. At least, I think I can. :)


>  - When doing other files, be alert to the licenses, as some are BSD3
> (when made entirely by contributors who have agreed to that)
>

Yes, the years and license types will be preserved.


>  - It would be nice to stop maintaining the Copyright header in each
> file, because it never stays up to date. The darcs history of the file
> would be much more accurate, albeit still imperfect. There was a thread
> that sort of discussed this in passing a while ago:
>
> http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2010-August/024768.html
>
> but I'm not entirely clear what the legal position is. I'd like to just
> change the Copyright to something like "See COPYRIGHT file" and then try
> to document the position more clearly there, but I'm not sure if that is
> legally a good idea.
>

Legally, it has no bearing as far as I know, but I'm not a lawyer. In North
and South America, copyright declarations aren't even mandatory, so keeping
the copyright header up-do-date isn't necessary. Given a detailed history
of changes signed electronically, a named author, and several references to
original authors, there's really no reason to worry about copyright
ownership. I'm guessing you're more concerned about the disclaimer of
warrantee, or the obligations imposed by the GPL.

I looked at a number of libraries on hackage, and many follow the
convention of simply noting the type of license. As an example, the
much-used "text" library still has the original LICENSE file declaring
copyright for Tom Harper, despite being maintained by bos. But that's for a
two-clause permissive license.

The GPL is a bit of a nasty beast, in that it doesn't apply to a single
file, but to "the Program", so a single notice of the application of that
license to the original program (presumably the first version of darcs)
should suffice. The addition of files unrelated to the original program
should not fall under the GPL, from what I understand, but I think that
covers all the concerns one could have about licenses and copyright notices.

If anyone ends up feeling strongly about it in the future, they can look at
the history, blame me, and be happy that the patches commute!
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