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Re: inaccurate upstream copyright notice



* Thibaut Paumard:

> He answered basically that the license itself is clearly stated (which
> is true), and that since it is GPL, the copyright is  unimportant and
> I shouldn't care.

I think this isn't that far from the truth, the GPL isn't usually
interpreted in a way that requires proper attribution.  The actual
license test seems to say otherwise, but existing developer practice and
the existence of the Chinese Dissident test (which the attribution
requirement in the GPL fails, depending on what "you" means in that
context) clearly favors licensing statements over a clean copyright
record.  This raises some interesting philosophical questions such as,
Can a computer program considered Free Software even if its copyright
status cannot be established in court?

Irrespective of the license, lack of proper attribution can be a
violation of moral rights, as far as they apply to software, but when
the original author committed, it is hard to see how to make any claims
based on that ("venire contra factum proprium", as it's called in
German).


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