Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
On Tue, 8 Jul 2008, Jens Gehrlein wrote:
diff --git a/board/tqc/tqma31/Makefile b/board/tqc/tqma31/Makefile new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f7e17c8 --- /dev/null +++ b/board/tqc/tqma31/Makefile @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +# +# Copyright (C) 2008, Guennadi Liakhovetski lg@denx.de +# Copyright (C) 2008, Jens Gehrlein sew_s@tqs.de
Thanks for the credit, but, although IANAL, I think, one does not _have_ to preserve the copyright of the original file when it gets copied to a new one. Otherwise most open-source files would have a veeeery long list of Copyrights:-) Am I right?
Thanks Guennadi
IANAL, but I play one on Groklaw sometimes, much to PJ's chagrin. ;-)
This is a squishy area. It is dependent on what of the original work survives the modification and whether the surviving pieces are copyrightable. It also depends on what country you are contemplating suing in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_and_exceptions_to_copyright
Things that must be done in certain ways are not copyrightable, so Makefiles are pretty marginal to start with IMHO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality
My opinion is to leave the original copyright notice in there and err on the side of preserving reasonable copyright notices. The lawyers will be happy to tell us that we did it wrong if it ever came to a lawsuit, and I would prefer that they tell us that we had a useless copyright notice in the file rather than tell us that we should have had a notice but didn't...
Best regards, gvb