[PATCH 0 of 3 DRAFT STABLE] Remove copyright years and switch to Contributors

Tue Jan 4 08:38:10 UTC 2011

timeless <timeless at gmail.com> writes:

> This series should be in five parts:
> 1. Remove the year bits (and possibly change to Contributors)

I don't really like the change to 'Copyright Contributors'. Could we
change it to 'Copyright Mercurial Contributors' or something like that?

> 2. Remove all rights reserved (not present)
> 3. Fix the win32 build (not present) to package a better
>    Contributors.txt
> 4. Candidate localization fixes (included, but severable)
> 5. Finalization of Candiate localization fixes (included, almost
>    certainly to be vetod, since in theory it means that localizers
>    won't notice the change)

Well, they wont have to notice if the translations are correct :) I
presume you got the translations from other projects and so I'm fine
with reusing them.

> Only part 1 is necessary, it alone will cause the localizations to get
> English copyright statements until they update. Part 2 is really
> unrelated to copyright years, but since the Mozilla changes bundled
> it, and the description which I'm quoting (with slight changes to
> match Mercurial) covered it, I'm including a placeholder for it. --
> And if hg email eats this message, I'll include that changeset (after
> writing it). Part 3 covers what is a somewhat related item (referenced
> near the end of this cover letter). Part 4 was written because it was
> fun. Please note that some locales have "" translations for copyright,
> I can't remember what that does.

When the .po file says

  msgid "foo"
  msgstr ""

then that means that there is no translation for "foo" and so the
English original will be used.

> Part 5 is split out because I know that if I fold it in, mg will
> complain. My general experience with this stuff, and part of the
> reason I'm doing it is that localizers don't understand it, at which
> point one might as well wade into their waters (which is what everyone
> does when they do mindless year bumps).

Heh :-) Your Danish "bidragyderkomité" sounds a bit funny -- it's not a
word I have ever heard before. It seems to be lawyer-speak according to
Google where I find it in documents about EU treaties.

> Mercurial, like Mozilla, has multiple localized and non-localized
> copyright statements of the form "© 2005-2010 Contributors" (or "(c)"
> or strangely "mozilla.org"), which appear when you use Get Info on the
> app bundle on OS X, or Properties on the application on Windows, and
> in the About dialog, as well as several which aren't visible anywhere
> at all.
>
> Updating them is a yearly source of pain and drama, because we always
> update them for en-US on all shipping branches, and people first
> object to changing them on branches ... and then people object to them
> not being changed in their locale on branches.
>
> --
> I haven't checked Mercurial's policy on changing locales for branches.

We don't have that many branches -- we just change the strings on
default and then they will flow over to stable at some later time.

> Harvey in context is Harvey Anderson, General Counsel for Mozilla
> Corporation.
>
> This next blob applies to contrib/hgk (which is not patched in this
> series, but i'll probably toss it in later).
>
> Harvey: I slipped one more bit of internet lawyering in, because ...
> contrib/hgk has a Buenos Aires Convention "all rights reserved"
> currently reading "Copyright (C) 2005 Paul Mackerras. All rights
> reserved." Since Buenos Aires is dead, it's not true, has no legal
> meaning anymore, and is not at all the tone we're trying for, it
> should be removed, but I can remove it separately.

> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=536336#c2
> -- Harvey Andrerson continues:
> Regarding the copyright notices, Phil's right. It would be duplicative
> to restate the arguments above - but in short, they're not really
> needed. The past practice was to include them to assist against the
> innocent infringer defenses, but the benefit is marginal.
>
> Note that there's a significant difference between what Mozilla had
> and what Mercurial had. In theory Mercurial's copyright to Matt and
> others might hold more water since Matt is a recognizable name. I'm
> not sure on this point.

I've always understood the "Matt Mackall and others" to mean "Matt
Mackall has copyright over some of the source, others have copyright
over other parts -- go see 'hg log' and 'hg annotate'". But maybe that's
just me who could expand it that much :)

> "the notice regarding contributors is unlikely to meet legal
> requirement because it doesn't provide a recognizable name."
>
> I think "others" probably falls into the same unhappy bucket as
> covered by Mozilla's problem case.
>
> What I liked while patching was the contrib/win32/ReadMe.html file,
> which (after patching) has:
>
>       Mercurial is Copyright Contributors
>       the <tt>Contributors.txt</tt> file for a list of contributors.

Your patch removed 'See'.

> Contributors here is recognizable. Unfortunately, it comes from
> CONTRIBUTORS, and that's obsolete... Oh well. I think it's still
> useful, since Contributors maps just as easily to CONTRIBUTORS which
> then has instructions for using hg log (well, abstract NEEDS WORK
> instructions, but hey...).

-- 
Martin Geisler

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