Re: "Invariant name" in hello's debian/rules file
Robert Millan <zeratul2@wanadoo.es> writes:
> Hi!
>
> Trying to distress a bit the recent *cough* discussion in -private, I think
> it's a good moment for rising my point in -legal (where it should be). I
> recently found this in the debian/rules file for GNU Hello (which, it is well
> known, has been copied to death into hundreds of other debian packages).
>
> # Sample debian/rules file - for GNU Hello.
> # Copyright 1994,1995 by Ian Jackson.
> # I hereby give you perpetual unlimited permission to copy,
> # modify and relicense this file, provided that you do not remove
> # my name from the file itself. (I assert my moral right of
> # paternity under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.)
> # This file may have to be extensively modified
>
> The license states that you can't remove the name from the file itself. I'm
> sure this is not what Ian intended, but one could add this line all over the
> file:
>
> # Ian Jackson
>
> and then it can't be removed. It all gets very confusing if we apply the same
> reasoning as for GFDL's Invariant sections. What do you people think?
It's small and does not appear a practical inconvenience -- unlike the
GFDL's Invariants.
I think as long as one occurrence of "Ian Jackson" appears in that
file, it hasn't been removed -- if you see what I mean. It's still
there, after all.
Also, if you are distributing a file in which Jackson retains
copyright, you have to include the line "Copyright 1994,1995 by Ian
Jackson" anyway. So it requires nothing more than copyright law does.
If you are cutting the file down enough that this becomes an
inconvenience, there's probably no copyright in those snippets.
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
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