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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: KDE/kdebase
From:       Ingo =?iso-8859-1?q?Kl=F6cker?= <kloecker () kde ! org>
Date:       2010-07-26 17:49:44
Message-ID: 201007261949.45493 () thufir ! ingo-kloecker ! de
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On Monday 26 July 2010, John Layt wrote:
> On Monday 26 July 2010 14:07:14 Alex Merry wrote:
> > SVN commit 1154884 by alexmerry:
> > 
> > Revert r1154600: Modified (some) 'About' windows to carry legally
> > enforceable Copyright messages. Also looks better than '(c)'. ;-)
> > Also fixed a few typos where I noticed them.
> > 
> > 
> > Please don't do huge sweeping changes of KAboutData things without
> > talking to the authors first.  I'm sure they don't appreciate
> > having their names removed from the about dialogs.
> > 
> > Note that
> > (a) the unicode copyright character is no more enforcible than (c)
> > (b) while "the KDE developers" is not a legal entity, neither is
> > "Dolphin authors" (c) it was decided a while back that we don't
> > care about whether the copyrights in about dialogs are meaningful,
> > since they can't hope to encompass everyone who holds copyrights
> > on the application code or any of the libraries it is linked to;
> > the copyright headers in the source files are the important ones.
> 
> Just to re-iterate previous discussions, both (c) and the unicode
> symbol carry little or no legal weight, it's the full word
> "Copyright" we need to use.

This is incorrect (unless the Unicode symbol is not an accepted 
representation of the copyright symbol). The copyright symbol, i.e. the 
c in a circle is the (one and only) officially/legally accepted 
abbreviation of the word "Copyright". I'm too lazy to look up a 
reference, but you can simply have a look at an arbitrary book, CD or 
DVD in your possession. Do you really think that all of those publishers 
of books, CDs, DVDs, etc. would use the copyright symbol instead of the 
word "Copyright" if the copyright symbol wasn't legally binding?


> Changing the About dialog to have just "Copyright" instead of "(c)"
> or the Unicode symbol is OK imho, and does look nicer and is more
> easily translated.

I agree that using the full word "Copyright" is preferable to the 
alternatives. We don't really need to save ink or space so there's no 
need to use the copyright symbol.


Regards,
Ingo

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