DRAFT document on coding conventions in kde libraries

[Nicolas Goutte]

On Friday 10 March 2006 18:01, Allen Winter wrote:
> 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"??

No!

> My opinion is no, but I see copyright owners like that all over the place.

It should not be used for new files. That was already decided for KDE (early 
2004 I think) and that should not be revoked (but perhaps correctly enforced 
everywhere in KDE).

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

Yes and no. If the copyright is from a legal entity then an email address of 
that entity would be preferable, even if the user has a @kde.org email 
address. (E.g. in Germany it is the employer that is copyright holder, not 
the employee, except if stated otherwise in the employement contract. e.g. 
KWord's SGML DocBook filter is like that.)

Have a nice day!