Re: annoying glib licencing stuff

[Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com>]

On Thu, 2005-06-16 at 10:00 +0200, Mathieu Lacage wrote:
> I understand that this might not be high on the todo list of the gtk+
> developers but I would appreciate an answer to that email.

Sorry, GUADEC interfered...

> regards,
> Mathieu
> 
> On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 13:57 +0200, Mathieu Lacage wrote:
> > On Thu, 2005-05-26 at 09:49 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > > The problem with making the license for the gtk and glib api docs more
> > > explicit is that we currently don't have a list of contributors. Someone
> > > will have to sit down with cvs annotate and produce such a list, before
> > > we can contact all contributors to ask for their agreement on whatever
> > > license we want to put in the docs.
> > 
> > Here is the list of contributors which was built out of:
> >   - cvs commits in all the files contained under the docs directory by
> > various cvs users who have an account.
> >   - cvs log messages for all the files contained under the docs
> > directory which reference some else than the commiter.

Thanks for doing this work, Mathieu

> 
> > I am pretty convinced it is extremely inclusive (i.e., I am pretty sure
> > I did not miss anyone) since I parsed each log at least 3 times. I
> > propose to send a message to each of these people along the following
> > lines. This should clear up the licensing issue. I don't really know
> > what to do once this information has been gathered. Specifically, I
> > thing we need to:
> >   - add proper licensing information at the top of each documentation
> > (glib and gobject documents) which should be a matter of copying the
> > licensing statement at the start of the <bookinfo> statement.
> > 
> >   - add proper credit to those who contributed: it would be nice to add
> > a small list somewhere in the documentation, probably another chapter at
> > the end of the documentation. It would be nice if there was a way to
> > ensure that these lists are maintained when a patch from someone is
> > applied.
> > 

Sounds like a good plan

> >   - add copyright statements: I have no idea on how to deal with this.
> > It is pretty easy with source code: the copyright statement at the top
> > of each source file is maintained by the contributors themselves. Maybe
> > a similar solution with xml comments at the top of each file would be a
> > first step. I think the license also requires a copyright statement to
> > appear next to the license statement. I have no idea what this statement
> > should contain. Should it simply be a list of the copyright statements
> > located at the top of each file ? I don't know. Comments are welcome.

I don't know either, unfortunately. The copyright situation is further
complicated by the fact that parts of the documentation are extracted
from the sources, I guess.

> 
> > Hi XXX,
> > 
> > We are trying to clear up the licensing status of the glib documentation
> > and the cvs logs show that you have directly or indirectly contributed
> > to this part of glib. We would appreciate if you could take a few
> > minutes to answer the few questions below.
> > 
> > 1) Have you really contributed to the glib documentation ? If so, how
> > big was that contribution ?
> >   - a few typos
> >   - more than a few typos
> > 
> > 2) If you have contributed "more than a few typos" to the glib
> > documentation, we need to know who owns the copyright on your
> > contribution. If you contributed this work as a part of your daytime
> > payed job, then your employer most likely owns that copyright and we
> > need to know who that is. Otherwise, you most likely own that copyright
> > and we need to know this.
> > 
> > 3) If you have contributed "more than a few typos" to the glib
> > documentation, we need you to confirm that the "copyright holder"
> > identified in (2) has accepted the glib documentation license. A copy of
> > that license is available there:
> > http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/glib/docs/reference/COPYING?view=markup
> > Do you confirm that your contribution follows this license ?
> >   - yes
> >   - no

Looks good to me. And for the parts of the docs written by me, the
answer is yes.

Matthias