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

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Message-ID: <wwtmtg6ar6gfxvezbcendmcuo3zzgferrmqvhvutos7vp3er2q@xljv6kkogidj>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2025 06:23:26 +0200
From: Alejandro Colomar <alx@...nel.org>
To: Vincent Lefevre <vincent@...c17.net>, 
	Jilayne Lovejoy <opensource@...ayne.com>, seabass-labrax@....com
Cc: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@...hat.com>, "Andries E. Brouwer" <aeb@....nl>, 
	linux-man@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, libc-alpha@...rceware.org
Subject: Re: man-pages-6.14 released

Hi,

TO += Jilayne, Sebastian

On Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 02:20:11AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2025-06-26 19:01:24 -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> > On 6/26/25 5:04 PM, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > > The thing is, as someone else mentioned, removals happen also implicitly
> 
> This was me, there:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/u2ogua4573d2xm2p2oiuna67kydkr3e26pt6lixeidezdw34dg@nvn64na3cptt/T/#me71349fc15520d5c183311dfaf85667903c07d9d

Thanks!

> > > by moving text from one page to another and not copying copyright
> > > notices, so how much does it matter an intentional rewrite of the
> > > copyright notices into a different form (but which keeps their
> > > copyright, as part of the AUTHORS file), compared to an unintentional
> > > removal of copyright by moving the text (these do actually remove
> > > copyright, so these are the problematic ones).
> > 
> > Both are legally mistakes.
> 
> Mistakes, yes (as long as copyright notices are per-file).
> But legally? Why?
> 
> I've always heard that a copyright notice was optional and only
> informative (so, in particular, there are no requirements to have
> per-file copyright notices instead of a single one for the work).

I tend to agree with you.  I'll invoke some SPDX people, which might
clarify our legal doubts.  I suspect they're lawyers or have contact
with lawyers.

For context to the SPDX people, we're discussing if the following is
valid or not:

There were a lot of old copyright notices, each with its own format,
some more formal, some less...

That was a huge mess, and the copyright notices were not always
respected: for example, in cases code has been moved from one file to
another, and the copyright notices weren't carried over.  In other
cases, some people (including myself) significantly modified some files,
but forgot to add a copyright notice for themselves.

So, I eventually decided to unify the copyright notices for the entire
project, so that the copyright notices would look like

	Copyright, the authors of the Linux man-pages project

And then a top-level AUTHORS file would list every author.  This is
quite more accurate than the previous copyright notices.  However, some
contributors are concerned that it might be illegal to modify those
copyright notices without express written permission.

I've sent email to everyone whose copyright notice has been modified,
and I got around a third of explicit approvals, but the other two thirds
remained silent (in some cases, the emails probably don't exist, the
people are dead, or they don't read the email anymore).  Notably, nobody
has explicitly said no.

What do you think?

Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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