DRAFT document on coding conventions in kde libraries

[Allen Winter]

On Friday 10 March 2006 11:20, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> 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
> 
Where Name is the copyright owner's real name.
One owner per Copyright line.

Instead of a Name do we allow "the KMail Developers" or "the KAPP team"??
My opinion is no, but I see copyright owners like that all over the place.

Ideally, the <domain> is kde.org or another KDE sponsored domain.

-- 
Let's Keep the Political Talk Out of KDE PLEASE