Legal question on copyright notices

Legal question on copyright notices

[Sascha Wilde]

Hi *,

I'm working on getting nnir.el (which provides some search
functionality based on local search engines like swish-e for gnus) in
the gnus main distribution, and by that a regular part the Emacs, too.

Part of the task is to transfer the copyright to the fsf, which is
basically no problem, as all contributors have signed papers.

My question is, how will the copyright notices in the file have to
look?

By now there are copyright notices of the main contributors scattered
all over the file.  Can they be substituted by one copyright notice of
the fsf, like:

 ;; Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
 ;;   2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

which would mean to change the copyright to the fsf retroactively.  Or
must they be retained, in which case I would move them all to the head
of the file and at the fsf copyright to the end of them, like:

 ;; Copyright (C) 1998 Kai Großjohann
 ;; Copyright (C) 1998 Simon Josefsson <jas@pdc.kth.se>.
 ;; Copyright (C) 2000, 2001 Christoph Conrad <christoph.conrad@gmx.de>.
 ;; Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Which is the right way to do this?

cheers
sascha
-- 
Sascha Wilde

"Unix was the first OS where you could carry the media and system
documentation around in a briefcase. This was fixed in BSD4.2."

Re: Legal question on copyright notices

[Glenn Morris]

Sascha Wilde wrote:

> scattered all over the file. Can they be substituted by one
> copyright notice of the fsf, like:
>
>  ;; Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
>  ;;   2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
[or]
>  ;; Copyright (C) 1998 Kai Großjohann
>  ;; Copyright (C) 1998 Simon Josefsson <jas@pdc.kth.se>.
>  ;; Copyright (C) 2000, 2001 Christoph Conrad <christoph.conrad@gmx.de>.
>  ;; Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

I believe this thread answers your question:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-10/msg00075.html

(use the first form)

Re: Legal question on copyright notices

[Richard Stallman]

    Part of the task is to transfer the copyright to the fsf, which is
    basically no problem, as all contributors have signed papers.

    My question is, how will the copyright notices in the file have to
    look?

    By now there are copyright notices of the main contributors scattered
    all over the file.  Can they be substituted by one copyright notice of
    the fsf, like:

     ;; Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
     ;;   2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Yes.