[GRASS-dev] Re: [GRASS-SVN] r30246 - grass/trunk/lib/gis

[Glynn Clements]

Markus Neteler wrote:

> could we conditionalize the year somehow on the VERSON file?

> > -       fprintf(fp, "# COPYRIGHT:    (C) 2007 GRASS Development Team/%s\n", G_whoami());
> > +       fprintf(fp, "# PURPOSE:      \n");
> > +       fprintf(fp, "# COPYRIGHT:    (C) 2008 GRASS Development Team/%s\n", G_whoami());

Or just omit it.

AFAIK, a specific notice of copyright isn't particularly meaningful
any more. It used to be significant in the US prior to adoption of the
Berne convention, when works had to be registered and copyright had to
be explicitly asserted. Nowadays, it only matters insofar as it
affects the ability to claim statutory damages if the work is
registered.

Also, "GRASS Development Team" isn't a legal entity; and even if it
was, it would only hold the copyright on work created by its "agents"
(employees, contracted members etc), not by freelance contributors
(unless they explicitly assign rights).

And the use of G_whoami() is rather dubious. Aside from whether the
person running the command with the --script option ends up having
rights in the finished script, the result may just be "root" or
"user501".

>  > so unconditionally specifying the current year would not be a good
>  > choice. But I have to admit I don't really understand the full
>  > significance of the copyright date.
> 
> 	It effectively sets the copyright expiration date.  IANAL,
> 	however.

I don't know about computer code specifically, but written works
normally expire a fixed period (between 50 and 80 years) after the
author's death.

All things considered, I suggest printing out the "keys" ("AUTHOR(S)"
etc) and leaving the rest of the line blank for the author to fill it
manually.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>