[Geany-devel] AUTHORS && THANKS files

[Matthew Brush]

On 09/23/2011 10:46 AM, Thomas Martitz wrote:
> Am 23.09.2011 05:33, schrieb Matthew Brush:
>> On a similar topic, I noticed in the source files, on top of the
>> license in the comments, some files list Nick and Enrico as the
>> copyright holders, some also have Frank, others Colomban, and yet
>> others Lex (and maybe others still). It seems as though if you
>> contribute significant portions of code to a file, you should add your
>> own copyright blurb in the comments? Would it not make more sense to
>> have a single copyright holder for all files in the project, be it a
>> person (ie. the current lead/maintainer), or an organization (ie. The
>> Geany Software Foundation :)
>
> Copyright assignment is seen as a bad thing generally. Why would you
> want to give up rights on your code?
>

I really don't care who owns the copyright TBH, as long as I can always 
freely use the code I have on my hard-drive.

>>
>> The reason I ask about the copyright thing is that I'm currently
>> working on something that basically adds entirely new files and I
>> wasn't sure if I should add my own copyright blurb in the fileheader
>> or that of someone else. It almost seems like currently the copyright
>> blurbs in the file header comments are more like an "Authorship" or
>> "Attribution" than copyright.
>
> You should definitely do that. You own the copyright, and no other
> author. And code can't have no copyright holder (unless auto generated
> perhaps). And you should defintely add yourself for significant changes.
>

Good to know.

>>
>> I think it might be useful to put some information about this in the
>> HACKING file so that contributors clearly know whether to put their
>> own copyright in the header, or if not, who's name/info to pass the
>> copyright on to. Also whether they should add their names to the
>> AUTHORS file, or THANKS file, and whether they should update the
>> ChangeLog (if that sticks around) and to update the documentation. It
>> also wouldn't hurt to mention in there that all of the submitted code
>> will become/has to be GPL, just in case that's not clear. We're coders
>> after all, not "law talkin guys".
>>
>
> It's implicitely GPL if you're editing GPL code. That's a) due to
> copyleft and b) patches generally don't relicense.
>

Yeah, I just meant as a "note:" in the hacking file that all patches 
submitted should be GPL'd, just in case newcomers aren't aware and 
haven't read the COPYING file.

Thanks for the answers!

Cheers,
Matthew Brush