DRAFT document on coding conventions in kde libraries

[Ingo Klöcker]

Am Donnerstag, 9. März 2006 07:19 schrieb Lauri Watts:
> On Wednesday 08 March 2006 23:58, Allen Winter wrote:
> > On Wednesday 08 March 2006 17:44, Lauri Watts wrote:
> > > That said, since the notice may grant you additional protection,
> > > it's important to do it properly.  Specifically, beware that (c)
> > > (that is a c, in either case, inside parentheses) means nothing;
> > > either write "Copyright" out in full and/or (preferably and) use
> > > a real copyright symbol ©
> > >
> > > So the format is simply this:
> > >
> > > © Copyright 2000-2002,2006 Your Name(s)
> >
> > or
> > Copyright (c) 2000-2002,2006 Your Name(s) ??
>
> No, read up - (c) does not mean anything at all.
>
[snip]
> > How about:
> >  © Copyright 2000-2002,2006 Name <user at domain>
> > or
> > Copyright 2000-2002,2006 Name <user at domain>
> >
> > And also require that each copyright holder has a copyright on a
> > line by itself? Thus we can have different copyright years for each
> > copyright holder.
>
> Yes, that's normally how it's done, where different authors have
> different sets of years.

To sum up the facts (at least according to 
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html):
- "(C)" alone "has never been given legal force" and thus can't be used 
_instead of_ "Copyright".
- © can be used instead of "Copyright", but in our case it's not really 
a good idea to do so.
- Brad Templeton writes:
    "The correct form for a notice is:
       Copyright [dates] by [author/owner]"
  But does this mean that
    Copyright (C) <year(s)> <author>
  is problematic because of the additional "(C)"?

Can we agree on the following?
- Check all files for wrong copyright notices containing "(C)" without 
"Copyright" and fix those copyright notices.
- Leave copyright notices of the form
    Copyright (C) <year(s)> <author>
  in existing files as they are.
- Require copyright notices of new files to be of the form that was 
already proposed above, i. e. either
    Copyright 2000-2002,2006 Name <user at domain>
  or optionally without email address
    Copyright 2000-2002,2006 Name

Regards,
Ingo
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