License in Readme

Open-source port of PoP that runs natively on Windows, Linux, etc.
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David
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License in Readme

Post by David »

Do you think I should extend the License section of SDLPoP's Readme like it's done in Apoplexy?
You know, noting the copyrights of images and other things that are not made by me?

Also, I think I should update the copyright year from 2015(!) to 2017...
Done: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/commit/ ... 921f66d968
(But then, how much copyright do I have over something that is so heavily based on a disassembly of someone else's code?)
David
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Re: License in Readme

Post by David »

David wrote: March 25th, 2017, 6:28 pm Also, I think I should update the copyright year from 2015(!) to 2017...
Updated year to 2018: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/commit/ ... b1d0761e63
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Norbert
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Re: License in Readme

Post by Norbert »

I think it has helped the project that, back in the day, you added a FOSS license.
It's also good that you've been updating the copyright years before each release.

Probably unconsciously, an 'unwritten rule' for SDLPoP is currently that contributors assign (give) copyright to you.
This impacts various things, including how the GPL could be enforced, your freedom and ease to optionally dual-license, etc.
The main reason for this post is this suggestion: you could make the aforementioned rule explicit in the doc/Readme.txt file.

Alternatively, copyright could be assigned to whoever works on files, as is done with e.g. the Linux kernel. For example, linux-5.10.6/fs/file.c starts with a license identifier, and then states copyright is 1998-1999 with Stephen Tweedie and Bill Hawes. Another example, linux-5.10.6/drivers/acpi/acpi_pnp.c starts with a license identifier, and then states copyright is 2014 with Intel Corporation, and authors are Zhang Rui and Rafael J. Wysocki. If you'd go with this, it would no longer be sufficient to credit contributors by just their first and/or GitHub names. (And even then, over time, you may be unable to track down contributors. An example, quoting from a CNET article: "Even then, not all contributors could be found, [...].")

Yet another alternative, is to assign copyright to some kind of legal (non-natural) person or a group. For example, apoplexy's copyright is now with "The apoplexy Team (see credits.txt)". This, however, is an entity that might not be (fully) recognized by law.
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