On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 7:04 PM, Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com> wrote:
On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 04:19:24PM -0500, Mark Brown wrote:
> Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com> wrote on 05/14/2013 04:03:19 PM:
> > Re: [legal-discuss] [openstack-tc] Copyrights and License Headers in
> > source files
>
> > > Mostly, I wanted to suggest that a lawyer needs to advise us on this.
> > > The Foundation is our go-to place for legal help, is it not?
> >
> > That is a very interesting question, as phrased, but I'd say the
> > answer is no.
>
> No offense intended, Richard, honest! -- I'm just curious on what
> they (OpenStack Foundation as organized) would say on the topic, if
> they have a say at all.

Oh, I didn't take any offense at all. And I also think any viewpoint
of the Foundation on this issue (or, let's say, on an issue that was
less trivial than this one), if it already existed, would be
interesting and given a lot of consideration. However, maybe I misread
it but I took your statements to imply that the Foundation plays a
role in providing legal advice to the collective body of OpenStack
project contributors.


When I emailed Lisa Miller, one of the Foundations corporate attorney team, I got the following guidance. I don't know if she "plays a role in providing legal advice to the collective body of OpenStack project contributors" but she plays a role in providing legal advice. To whom exactly I'm not certain but she replied to my email when I was asking about OpenStack LLC copyright transfer and guidance on headers. Here's the summary, collected in the wiki page at https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Documentation/Copyright.

Generally speaking, copyright notices are no longer required in order to create or protect your copyright rights, but can be helpful in certain instances. The general rule for copyright notices is that it should include the © symbol, the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright owner. With websites, there is a genuine question of when the website is "first published."

Because the date included in the copyright notice is the date of first publication, a range of dates is unnecessary. That is the year would be "2010" or "2013" rather than 2010-present.

All references to "OpenStack LLC" can be changed to "OpenStack Foundation" because the copyright was transferred when the new entity was created.

Here are some specific examples.

OpenStack LLC notice

When a webpage is run by OpenStack only and is substantially revised or updated, the copyright notice should include the year that the content was updated. In a Nova dev doc page, for example, the copyright notice should be "© 2013, OpenStack Foundation" if the content has been updated this year or "© 2012, OpenStack Foundation" if the content was last updated in 2012.

US Government copyright notice

For the government copyright notice, if the material you received from the government has not been substantially revised or updated since you received it, do not change the year on the copyright notice.

Multiple copyright holders

If you update a page, you can add the entity you represent (self or organization) to the list of Copyright holders, but do not remove any listed Copyright headings. If the content has been substantially updated in 2013, add the year to the change. If no substantive updates or revisions have been made to the copyrighted material, the year does not need to be updated.

The RST files in developer documentation and the DocBook files in operator documentation handle copyright statements slightly differently but these general guidelines apply no matter the doc file format. You are not required to add a copyright header to an RST file. Ideally the Apache header will suffice.




 
 - RF



_______________________________________________
legal-discuss mailing list
legal-discuss@lists.openstack.org
http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss