[postgis-devel] How does copyright work and how to credit.

[Nicklas Avén]

Hallo

Now I have committed 3D line-line functionality with a note where the
algorithm comes from. I that will be ok.

But what do you mean by continuing under own copyright
Am I supposed to edit the header? I have just copied some other header
when I made the file, 3dmeasures.c. 

What does it mean to have the copyright? Doesn't the code belong to
PostGIS and everybody?

Everyone has the right to copy, or?

And the copyright note in the header how should it be used? I mean there
is a lot of contributors in many of the files.

I have not thought about it, but what is copyright in an open source
project. Is there some text about it, somewhere?


Thanks
Nicklas


 with a On Sat, 2010-12-04 at 19:55 -0800, Paul Ramsey wrote:
> Nik,
> 
> They can't copyright their idea, but they can patent it. Probably the
> algorithm you are following is not patented, but if that kind of thing
> worries you, you could do a patent search. I'd include the URL
> reference as you suggest, and continue the work under your own
> copyright.
> 
> P.
> 
> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Nicklas Avén
> <nicklas.aven at jordogskog.no> wrote:
> >
> > Hallo
> >
> > The code for line to line distance-calculations that is not yet
> > comitted is mostly taken from here:
> > http://softsurfer.com/Archive/algorithm_0106/algorithm_0106.htm
> >
> > As you can see in the attachment I have not done any big rewriting.
> >
> > It says on the page with the algorithms that it can be used, but then
> > they want their copyright to be included.
> >
> > I don't know how things like this works. I mean I have definitely used
> > their idea. Is it their idea that is copyrighted or is it their exactly
> > way of writing it. I mean, I hope it isn't the idea.
> >
> > And it feels quite silly to rewrite it more than necessarily just to
> > make it look different.
> >
> > What I would like to do is to just write a note in a comment that the
> > algorithm comes from softsurfer.com and can be found at page :
> > http://softsurfer.com/Archive/algorithm_0106/algorithm_0106.htm
> >
> > Would that be ok?
> >
> >
> > Thanks
> > Nicklas
> >
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