Open Stack

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 7:04 PM, Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com>wrote:

> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 04:19:24PM -0500, Mark Brown wrote:
> > Richard Fontana <rfontana at 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 <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/OpenStack> LLC"
can be changed to "OpenStack
<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/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<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/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<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/OpenStack> Foundation"
if the content has been updated this year or "© 2012,
OpenStack<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/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
>
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