Re: Copyright Notices

On Monday 02 February 2009 19:30:26 Gary Steinert wrote:
> I have noticed many inconsistencies in the copyright and license notices at
> the top of each source file. I think that as a project, we should have a
> standardised header for each source file, partly so that people do not get
> confused by the licenses applied to our source code, and also simply for
> visual consistency.
> I am willing to put in the time to change the headers, but I'm not entirely
> sure about the legality of changing the wording of some of the headers.
> As far as I can tell, the header needs only to state the license used, as
> well as the copyright holders, but I may be wrong.
> The header I propose for every file in the project is as follows:
> (best viewed in single spaced font =P)

If the file is already under "GPL v2 or later", or "LGPL v2 or later", you can 
change the header to match this.

If it is GPL 2-only, you CANNOT do this without consent from every person who 
has a copyright claim on the file.  I believe that if it is LGPL v2(.1) 
(without the "or later"), you can change it (I think it is inherent in the 
LGPL license that you can switch to a later version), but I am not certain on 
that point.

If it is BSD, MIT or X11 licensed, you can put the header in, but you probably 
need to copy the revelant license underneath with the text "parts of this file 
are licensed under the $LICENSE license:"

CCing kde-licensing for more input.  And because it's a good place to discuss 
this sort of stuff.

Alex


>
> /**************************************************************************
> *   This file is part of Amarok                                           
> *   Copyright (C) 2009 Gary Steinert <[email protected]>
> *                                                                      
> *   Amarok is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify       
> *   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
> *   the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or  
> *   (at your option) any later version.                               
> *                                                                    
> *   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 
> *   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 
> *   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the 
> *   GNU General Public License for more details.                 
> *                                                               
> *   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
> *   along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
> ***************************************************************************/

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