Copyright notices.

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

There was a string on the developers mailing list that related to the proper use 
of copyright notices. See attached. 

I had a look at GNOME Help manuals and I noticed that we are using the following 
format: 

"Copyright" <copyright symbol> [copyright date] [copyright owner]

According to my researches, the format should be one of the following: 

Where Space is Not a Problem: 
=============================

"Copyright" [copyright date] [copyright owner]

or

Where Space is Limited: 
=======================

<copyright symbol> [copyright date] [copyright owner]

Therefore, what we are using right now is overkill. I suggest we change the 
format to the first one above, namely the space-is-not-a-problem format. This 
looks like a style sheet change. 

Pat


----------------Attachment from desktop-devel-list gnome org-----------------
On 14 Nov 2002 Pat opined: 

The view from the documentation perspective...

Thanks for bringing up this point. I did a bit of research and here are my 
findings: 

- A discrete piece of software or documentation should always contain a proper 
copyright notice. A statement of the bleating obvious you say, well, the key 
word here is "proper". 

- A proper copyright notice consists of the following: 

	o 	The word "Copyright" or, if there is a shortage of space, the 		
		copyright symbol, which is a C in a closed circle. 

		NOTE: (c) has no legal weight. Never use (c). 
	
	o 	The year of first publication of the work, usually the year of 
		FCS.
		
	o 	The owner of the copyright. 
	
I've just noticed that in the Help and other documentation we have been using 
both the word "Copyright" and the copyright symbol in our copyright notices. 
Whereas this is not wrong, it is belt-and-braces and really should be just 
"Copyright". I need to take up this topic on the gnome-doc-list. I also need to 
include the above information in the GNOME Documentation Style Guide so we have 
the topic covered for future reference. 

Pat
	
 To: Gareth Bowker <tgb tgb org uk>
> Cc: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> Am Son, 2002-09-22 um 12.46 schrieb Gareth Bowker:
> > On Sun, Sep 22, 2002 at 11:57:08AM +0200, Christian Neumair wrote:
> > > Another aspect are the copyright entries:
> > > Some developery use
> > > (C) <year> <name> or
> > > Copyright (C) <name> <year>,
> > > some others
> > > <name> (C) <year>
> > > and so on.
> > > What's the "official" (or at least the most used) expression?
> > > Additionally, we should replace the (C) by a copyright character
> > > wherever possible (e.g. UTF-8, ISO-8859-X charsets).
> > 
> > I heard a while ago that you should always write the word Copyright in full,
> > e.g.
> > 
> > Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation
> > 
> > That's also the most-used form I've seen.
> > 
> > I seem to recall that (C) holds no legal meaning, the copyright symbol
> > however does. Or something like that. It was a long time ago.
> 
> Whohoo!
> Just look at gnome-panel HEAD po. I think we broke our record:
> (c) 2001 Red Hat, Inc.
> (C) 2002 Red Hat, Inc.
> (c) 2001 Red Hat, Inc
> Copyright 2002 Red Hat, Inc.
> 
> I hope we'll find a solution until 2.2 is released.
> 
> regs,
>  Chris
> 
>