[Python-Dev] Re: Copyright statements ([Patch #103002] Fix for #116285: Properly raise UnicodeErrors)

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Martin von Loewis wrote:
> 
> > My only problem with it is your copyright notice. AFAIK, patches to
> > the Python core cannot contain copyright notices without proper
> > license information. OTOH, I don't think that these minor changes
> > really warrant adding a complete license paragraph.
> 
> I'd like to get an "official" clarification on this question. Is it
> the case that patches containing copyright notices are only accepted
> if they are accompanied with license information?
> 
> I agree that the changes are minor, I also believe that I hold the
> copyright to the changes whether I attach a notice or not (at least
> according to our local copyright law).

True.

> What concerns me that without such a notice, gencodec.py looks as if
> CNRI holds the copyright to it. I'm not willing to assign the
> copyright of my changes to CNRI, and I'd like to avoid the impression
> of doing so.
>
> What is even more concerning is that CNRI also holds the copyright to
> the generated files, even though they are derived from information
> made available by the Unicode consortium!

The copyright for the files and changes needed for the Unicode 
support was indeed transferred to CNRI earlier this year. This
was part of the contract I had with CNRI.

I don't know why the copyright notice wasn't subsequently removed from
the files after final checkin of the changes, though, because, as
I remember, the copyright line was only added as "search&replace"
token to the files in question in the sign over period.

The codec files were part of the Unicode support patch, even though
they were created by the gencodec.py tool I wrote to create them
from the Unicode mapping files. That's why they also carry the
copyright token.

Note that with strict reading of the CNRI license, there's no
problem with removing the notice from the files in question:

"""
...provided, however, that CNRI's
License Agreement and CNRI's notice of copyright, i.e., "Copyright (c)
1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives; All Rights
Reserved" are retained in Python 1.6 alone or in any derivative
version prepared by Licensee...
"""

The copyright line in the Unicode files is
"(c) Copyright CNRI, All Rights Reserved. NO WARRANTY.", so this
does not match the definition they gave in their license text.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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