odd lisp/ChangeLog entry

odd lisp/ChangeLog entry

[Glenn Morris]

You seem to be having an identity crisis:


  2007-08-01  Dan Nicolaescu  <dann@ics.uci.edu>
              Stefan Monnier  <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>

              * vc.el: Document new VC operation `extra-menu'.

Re: odd lisp/ChangeLog entry

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

  > You seem to be having an identity crisis:

It's just a way to acknowledge that the change was developed by 2
persons. Look in the GCC logs, there are a lot of entries like this.
Can you suggesting a better format? 

  >   2007-08-01  Dan Nicolaescu  <dann@ics.uci.edu>
  >               Stefan Monnier  <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
  > 
  >               * vc.el: Document new VC operation `extra-menu'.

Re: odd lisp/ChangeLog entry

[Glenn Morris]

Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

> Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:
>
>   > You seem to be having an identity crisis:
>
> It's just a way to acknowledge that the change was developed by 2
> persons. Look in the GCC logs, there are a lot of entries like this.

Huh. I've just never seen a log entry like this; and am slightly
surprised they are considered OK from a legal point of view.

> Can you suggesting a better format?

No. If you're going to do that, the format seems fine.

Re: odd lisp/ChangeLog entry

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Glenn Morris writes:
 > Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
 > 
 > > Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:
 > >
 > >   > You seem to be having an identity crisis:
 > >
 > > It's just a way to acknowledge that the change was developed by 2
 > > persons. Look in the GCC logs, there are a lot of entries like this.
 > 
 > Huh. I've just never seen a log entry like this; and am slightly
 > surprised they are considered OK from a legal point of view.

It's just a work of joint authorship, which is well-defined in
copyright law (at least in the U.S., I forget what Berne and other
regional jurisdictions have to say about it).  The only tricky part
about it is that in the absence of any contract to the contrary, all
joint authors have equal and full copyright AIUI.  This causes
problems when you want to give an exclusive license.  But this doesn't
matter given the FSF's legal strategy, since they will insist on an
assignment from all copyright holders in any case.

And, of course, there's the wonderful fact that the whole point is a
non-exclusive license. :-)

Re: odd lisp/ChangeLog entry

[Richard Stallman]

    Huh. I've just never seen a log entry like this; and am slightly
    surprised they are considered OK from a legal point of view.

If the patch is a joint work, that change log is probably ok.