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Re: Changes to "Contribution Checklist" -- Format of the contribution.
- From: Carlos O'Donell <carlos at redhat dot com>
- To: Joseph Myers <joseph at codesourcery dot com>, Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat dot com>
- Cc: Andreas Schwab <schwab at suse dot de>, Adhemerval Zanella <adhemerval dot zanella at linaro dot org>, Szabolcs Nagy <szabolcs dot nagy at arm dot com>, GNU C Library <libc-alpha at sourceware dot org>
- Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2019 17:40:06 -0400
- Subject: Re: Changes to "Contribution Checklist" -- Format of the contribution.
- References: <187fa6e8-11fc-e33a-daa1-51d0aa3962f7@redhat.com> <87y36iy9mm.fsf@oldenburg2.str.redhat.com> <29a94078-d05d-e29c-8009-e905bfb2bf31@redhat.com> <87ftspjkao.fsf@oldenburg2.str.redhat.com> <alpine.DEB.2.21.1902151349210.19658@digraph.polyomino.org.uk> <87o96edbe8.fsf@oldenburg2.str.redhat.com> <alpine.DEB.2.21.1903132131450.10481@digraph.polyomino.org.uk>
On 3/13/19 5:35 PM, Joseph Myers wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2019, Florian Weimer wrote:
>
>>> I think we should remove the existing "Contributed by" statements (that
>>> avoids them appearing in new files people copy from old ones) - but before
>>> removing such a statement we need to make sure the names in question are
>>> properly credited in contrib.texi.
>>
>> I don't want to make such changes because as far as I know, for some
>> contributors at least, we cannot legally remove them unilaterally
>> because these authors have a right to be named as such, something that
>
> What's the basis for such a right to be named in the source file (as
> opposed to in contrib.texi, ChangeLogs, etc.)?
>
> (In UK law, the right to be identified as author of a work does not apply
> to a computer program anyway.)
I wondered this also and I spoke with DJ about this with regards to
US law. The best we could figure is that there has to be some country
where copyright assignment and authorship are two distinct items.
You can assign copyright, but authorship remains yours, and cannot
be removed. Removing a name might be seen as the equivalent of removing
authorship. I don't know if this is true, the ChangeLog and VCS all
contain authorship information for the file anyway, so I think we might
be able to remove "Contributed by" statements to avoid confusion.
IANAL. I think we might need legal advice here.
--
Cheers,
Carlos.