Re: Fwd: question : authors names in code
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 at 20:24:46 +0100, Alain Baeckeroot wrote:
> I wanted to know if i have the right to remove the names from
> source code, and instead just put : "see CREDITS"
>
> for example:
> /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *
> * engine.c
> * This file is part of lincity.
> * Lincity is copyright (c) I J Peters 1995-1997, (c) Greg Sharp 1997-2001.
> * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */
>
> This file is now part of Lincity-NG, and there were significant changes,
> enought for the file to not work anymore in old lincity.
>
> Can i write instead
> /* engine.c
> * This file is part of Lincity-NG
> * See COPYING for license informations, and CREDITS for authors */
Don't do that - it loses valuable information about who holds copyright
on which code (for a start, you lose your ability to distinguish between
files owned by the authors of lincity, files owned by Lincity-NG
contributors, and files in which both groups have a copyright interest).
Note that it's copyright holders who're important, not credits (in code
written by several people for an employer, it should usually be the
employer who's listed).
Something like this would be ideal (adding some other hypothetical
contributors for the sake of an example). The bit enclosed in {} I'd
personally leave out, but if you have a policy of saying "This file is part of
LinCity-NG" in other files, then you can include it.
/* engine.c
*
* This file was originally part of lincity{, and is now part of Lincity-NG}.
*
* Copyright 1995-1997 I J Peters
* Copyright 1997-2001 Greg Sharp
* Copyright 2006-2008 Alain Baeckeroot
* Copyright 2007 Example Corp. <http://example.com/>
* Copyright 2008 Joe Bloggs
*
* This program is free software; you may [blah blah blah GPL...]
*/
Simon
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFHjfDVWSc8zVUw7HYRAkvOAJsEjIRU9S/QsfSfWdeBOlQ82OGHZwCglky8
GiVwGO24RWoDRVJ4a8dr8+w=
=geiV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: