[mapserver-dev] Re: [mapserver-users] MapServer 6.0.0-rc1 release

Thu Apr 28 22:04:46 EDT 2011

On 4/28/2011 9:11 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
> On 11-04-28 08:59 PM, William Kyngesburye wrote:
>> In packaging my Mac build, I noticed that the readme license section
>> has 1996-2007 for the copyright dates. Should this be updated?
>>
>
> Moving this to the -dev list.
>
> We do not have a practice of updating the copyright dates, and I've
> always been wondering if we should do it or not (not only for MapServer,
> but also for other projects in which I am involved).
>
> Maybe others on the -dev list have opinions or pointers to best practices?
>

In my prior corporate life that was involved with software development 
and publishing I had to deal with this question and in a nutshell this 
is what our lawyers said.

A "work" is copyrighted at the time of creation or when it is published 
if it is a collection of "works". We can assume that our files are our 
works and they are copyrighted when they are created and when they are 
edited. Any release, alpha, beta, point, major, whatever, is copyrighted 
as a collected works when we release it.

The lawyers like you to state the copyright because it is like staking 
you claim and if it every got called into a legal battle it greatly 
defends your claim of ownership.

OK, I am not a lawyer, and I may not have the exact wording a lawyer 
would like to describe this, but I hopefully have relayed the guts of it 
correctly.

So what do I think this means for mapserver?

1. we track our code development in SVN so I think we have adequate 
history and documentation there and developers do not need to change 
their day to day behavior in this regard.

2. I do think we should keep the release copyrights current. This could 
be a range like 1996-<current-year>. Also the lawyer were very specific 
about the format of the copyright and that one should not use (c) as 
that is NOT a valid copyright symbol and if you can not reproduce an © 
character then leave the symbol out. The copyright should be one of the 
following:

-Steve W