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

[Paul Ramsey]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Nicklas Avén
<nicklas.aven at jordogskog.no> wrote:
> 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.

Yes, add (c) you, 2010

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

The code you write belongs to you. However, you generously license it
to the rest of us under the terms of the GPL. This has the effect of
making your ownership relatively meaningless from a practical point of
view (you've relinquished most of your control) but does not
extinguish it.

> 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?

>From "What is Copyleft", http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/

"To copyleft a program, we first state that it is copyrighted; then we
add distribution terms, which are a legal instrument that gives
everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's
code, or any program derived from it, but only if the distribution
terms are unchanged. Thus, the code and the freedoms become legally
inseparable."

By starting from a position of strength (we assert our copyright
rights to the property) we can provide strong freedoms in the form of
a license that provides for perpetual freedom to copy and
redistribute.

That's the FSF point of view anyways, and since we're a GPL project,
might as well use it :)

Paul

>
> 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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>> >
>> >
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