[Qt-creator] Copyright convention for plugins development

[Mateusz Loskot]

On 25 November 2013 09:38, Oswald Buddenhagen
<oswald.buddenhagen at digia.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 12:01:19AM +0000, Mateusz Loskot wrote:
>> During such process of following/copying, how copyrights should be managed?
>>
> what you are calling "copyrights" (i.e., the copyright headers) are
> legally largely irrelevant. it's merely a claim of copyright. the actual
> copyright derives from the code's origin, which can be tracked in the
> git history, and would have to be testified about in court. therefore,
> these headers are more about giving credit than copyright.

You are correct. It's more a convention than legal requirement.

>> From experience in other FOSS projects that I'm involved in,
>> if I followed/copied copyrighted code from file x.cpp while writing y.cpp,
>> I would have copied the original copyright notice from x.cpp to y.cpp,
>> and added my own copyright to that in y.cpp.
>>
> this is entirely correct.
> note that the digia copyright can be added indiscriminately, because the
> CLA grants it to digia.

I see.

> when you are copying code selectively, you would need to check which
> external contributors had a part in the copied fragments. this is
> tedious even if you just use git log/blame, and strictly speaking it
> isn't even sufficient (new code written by one party can still logically
> derive from another party's work, even in a different file). given the
> effort involved and the fact that in the end you always end up with an
> inconsistent mess anyway, there is a certain reluctance to add
> additional headers for anything that is not "obviously significant".

Ok, that rationale makes sense to me.

The main reason I asked the question about copyright notices in source
files is the fact that I follow or copy some *and* I just want to preserve
some credits with the spirit of fair play :-)
So, I'm more concerned about crediting original authors
than about fulfilling legal requirements.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz  Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net