Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2018 07:27:30 +0000 From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> Cc: Juli Mallett <juli@northcloak.com>, "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@freebsd.org>, Warner Losh <imp@freebsd.org>, src-committers <src-committers@freebsd.org>, svn-src-all@freebsd.org, svn-src-head@freebsd.org Subject: Re: svn commit: r335091 - head/sbin/nvmecontrol Message-ID: <48400.1528961250@critter.freebsd.dk> In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfpG0i%2BsRTi-808_mrjb382daGog=58SCOnJ5otWFEoYuw@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAGSiXYy9niJhbt6%2BT9idE=8UhpCkJ4-ATjaz56AFMu9UA5xDeg@mail.gmail.com> <201806140535.w5E5ZBmf043114@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> <CAGSiXYxOzLypvRNoU=nkn%2BVgeSM7c%2Bgf0wVvhAj4J6uxzKU3hw@mail.gmail.com> <CANCZdfpG0i%2BsRTi-808_mrjb382daGog=58SCOnJ5otWFEoYuw@mail.gmail.com>
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-------- In message <CANCZdfpG0i+sRTi-808_mrjb382daGog=3D58SCOnJ5otWFEoYuw@mail.gma= il.com>, Warner Losh writes: >The year of first publication of the work; Please be aware that "year of first publicaiton of the work" is a surprising tricky legal concept, because neither "first", "publication" or "the work" means what a normal or sane person would expect. >But this only required for works published before March 1, 1989. It later >states: > >"Copyright notice is optional for unpublished works, foreign works, or >works published on or after March 1, 1989. When notice is optional, >copyright owners can use any form of notice they wish." This is just about the worst legal advise one can imagine, because US still runs a system of "Copyright Registration" and there is a lot riding on having done so "promptly" if you ever get into a lawsuit, and if you don't affix a notice it gets even worse. >The project wishes date ranges. :) I support that, for data-archaeological reasons, but the publication year cannot just be updated willy nilly. A notice of "2014-2017" literally means "Some individual parts, each of which clear the 'substantial' threshold, were published in 2014, others in 2015, others again in 2016 and some in 2017" This is why "2014-2017" is significantly different from "2014,2016-2017". It is also important to understand that Copyright cannot be "renewed" this way unless the changes are 'substantial' enough, which probably means they have to clear the 'derivative work' threshold to be safe. But there is no guidance to be found *anywhere* what it takes for source code to clear any of those thresholds, because nobody has gone to court on that question yet. And nobody is likely to do so in the next three decades, because almost no software has fallen out of copyright, and no software will do so in the next three decades (All Hail Mickey!) The legal advice I have received is that one should "probably not" update the publication year unless the changes amount to "a rewrite", but updating *a little* too aggressively will probably only be "harmless error" due to the total absense of statute text and case law. Nobody want to guess what the situation is for "live works", under which countinous software development (probably) falls, and when you start talking about changing maintainers, your friendly copyright lawyer will get that glazed "Thank goodness the lawsuits wont start until I'm dead" look. And of course all this gets much more "interesting" if APIs can truly be copyrighted, because then we need to find out what "an API" is in the first place. -- = Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe = Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence= .
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