linux-kernel - Re: man-pages-6.14 released

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Message-ID: <3e82680d-149c-4a67-b838-bc73c0be3e4e@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2025 16:41:16 -0400
From: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@...hat.com>
To: "Andries E. Brouwer" <aeb@....nl>, Alejandro Colomar <alx@...nel.org>
Cc: linux-man@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 libc-alpha@...rceware.org
Subject: Re: man-pages-6.14 released

On 5/9/25 8:14 AM, Andries E. Brouwer wrote:
> Hi Alejandro,
> 
>>> I wonder about the legal status of such a change.
>>> There is ownership of the pages, and a license that allows
>>> others to do certain things.
>>
>> I also wonder about it.  We discussed it for several (~3) months, and I
>> documented links to the discussion in the commit message:
>>
>> commit 9f2986c34166085225bb5606ebfd4952054e1657
>> Author: Alejandro Colomar <alx@...nel.org>
>> Date:   Fri Apr 11 02:19:48 2025 +0200
>>
>>      *, CREDITS: Unify copyright notices
>>      
>>      Link: <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/jpin2dbnp5vpitnh7l4qmvkamzq3h3xljzsznrudgioox3nn72@57uybxbe3h4p/T/#u>
>>      Link: <https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/copyright-notices-in-open-source-software-projects>
> 
> So I read this last link, and see
> 
> "Don’t change someone else’s copyright notice without their permission
> You should not change or remove someone else’s copyright notice unless
> they have expressly (in writing) permitted you to do so. This includes
> third parties’ notices in pre-existing code."
> 
> The main topic of that link is how one should document new contributions,
> and writing "by the contributors of the foo project" is OK for new stuff,
> of course provided the new contributor agrees.
> In my opinion it is illegal to change existing copyright notices,
> unless you get permission from all people involved, which seems unlikely.

I agree with Andries.

This is also my interpretation, you cannot remove these entries without
express permission from the copyright holder.

In glibc we did not remove any copyright notices, but *added* under DCO
"Copyright, The GNU Toolchain authors."

Example:
    1 /* Map in a shared object's segments from the file.
    2    Copyright (C) 1995-2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    3    Copyright The GNU Toolchain Authors.
    4    This file is part of the GNU C Library.
    ...

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.