On 2006-12-21 10:39:27 +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote: > Please note that I am not a lawyer. Here is my understanding of the > situation. > > In copyright notices the date refers to the date of publication. > > It is optional to add the date of the revision if one feels that the > revision is substantial. This is just like a "re-publication" or a > "new edition" and is a way to extend the validity of the copyright on > the grounds that substantial new material has been added.
Yes, perhaps if the new version consists of bug fixes. > Note that even if the authors released a file in 2006 they are free > to choose to put "Copyright 1998" in the header. This just decreases > the validity period of their copyright assertion. Well, this also says that the work is anterior to some possible other work. So, that's a lie. That's why I think that years *must* be updated when the changes are significant. The second problem is that the Debian maintainer is not the author (is it?), and mustn't decrease a year provided by the author. For instance, in the source, debian/copyright says about the following authors: Copyright (C) 1993 Juergen Weigert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Copyright (C) 1993 Michael Schroeder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> but the encoding.c file says: /* Copyright (c) 1993-2003 * Juergen Weigert ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) * Michael Schroeder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > Further note that the copyright of 2002 continues to be valid as of today :-) > > However, I do agree with the submitter that the debian/copyright > file could do with a re-look from the maintainer in conjunction with > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00023.html > > Please bump the severity back up if you feel this is a more > important than "important". Shouldn't a correct copyright file be in etch? -- Vincent Lefèvre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
