On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:55:38 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
On Thursday 25 September 2008, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> I wonder even more why rpmdev-bumpspec says
>
> Copyright (c) 2005-2008 Red Hat Inc.
>
> which is not correct. 2005 may be true for its origin, the pre-Fedora
> Extras era. For the first mass-rebuilds and beyond that it was developed
> further by me, and just because I don't want to claim full copyright,
> it should not be given to Red Hat for 2006-2008. That sounds very wrong
> to me, because nobody at Red Hat has been an author of changes to the
> script in those years.
This was discussed in several mails between you, me and notting in March when
I was about to add the script in rpmdevtools. I asked you to add copyright
notices to the script, and you added it but without mentioning a copyright
holder.
I've found those mails, but they don't cover such a very specific
copyright line that differs from the one I called "reasonable".
It's simply not accurate.
When discussing it further, you concluded "(c) Fedora Project
... sounds
reasonable. Who is/are the original author(s)? [...]"
Because I'm not a lawyer, and the script is derived work based on something
that didn't have any legal stuff attached to it at all. I wrote the
following and added Bill:
: (c) Fedora Project ... sounds reasonable.
:
: Who is/are the original author(s)? The skeleton of the original code is
: still present. If memory serves correctly, the first version of the script
: was given out by someone at Red Hat for the pre-Fedora Extras 3 period and
: then improved for the first mass-rebuilds. But who exactly was the original
: author, I don't know. notting or sopwith or mkj or gafton? Neither one?
You see? With an existing list of authors, I could have added myself.
But claiming full copyright and credits [for any original bits that
may be left] is an entirely different thing.
and did not mention
that you would like to have your name there.
I don't care about my name in there. I don't get my name attached to
lots of patches for F/LOSS either. And this is just a script that can be
rewritten from scratch if someone insists on doing that.
To your question (which
mentioned someone at Red Hat giving it out for the pre-Fedora Extras 3
period), Bill answered "If it was given out by someone @RH, you can just put
(c) Red Hat on it." and there were no further replies.
True, but Bill apparently was the wrong one to ask. And a different
proposal was made earlier, too. However, the added line changes history.