DRAFT document on coding conventions in kde libraries

[Matt Rogers]

On Friday 10 March 2006 11:01, 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"??
> 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.

IIUC, using "the KMail Developers" will not work since "the KMail Developers" 
has no legal definition, although i suppose you could define "the KMail 
Developers" as a certain list of people and as people add code to KMail, they 
get added to that list.

Thanks
--
Matt