Re: [Qemu-devel] Changing the QEMU svn VERSION string

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <address@hidden>
            Andreas_Färber <address@hidden> writes:
: Hi,
: 
: On the topic of QEMU help output, it still reads:
: Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard
: 
: Since the code was last modified in 2009, I feel that should be  
: reflected in some copyright statement.

Likely.

: Given that iirc Fabrice has not contributed code this year, I see two  
: options:
: 
: Copyright (c) 2003-2009 Fabrice Bellard and contributors
: 
: Or if we want to stick with one maintainer's name only:
: 
: Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard
: Copyright (c) 2008-2009 Anthony Liguori

What purpose is this copyright notice?  Is it to notify users of the
collection copyright (eg, the gluing together of everything)?  In that
case, the above is fine.  If it is supposed to be for everybody's
individual contributions, then none of the above are sufficient (or
required).  However, it likely would be good to include a contributors
page.  I haven't reviewed all the licenses in all the files in the
system, but it never hurts to have a file that acknowledges all the
copyrights in a central place.

Unlike trademarks, you can't say "Copyright by a bunch of folks"
That's not valid copyright notice, and that's what the "and
contributors" does....

My recommendation would be to go with the second form.

Warner



: Am 07.04.2009 um 04:37 schrieb Anthony Liguori:
: 
: > Hi,
: >
: > I'd like to update the VERSION string in QEMU's svn tree.  Right  
: > now, it's 0.10.0 and since we have a 0.10.2 release, that's somewhat  
: > confusing.
: >
: > I don't want to make it 0.11.0 either because that's not going to be  
: > reliable from a feature detection perspective.  What I would like is  
: > to make it 0.11.0-devel or something similar to that.
: >
: > Being the nice guy I am, I thought I would check that this didn't  
: > make libvirt go bonkers :-)  This is the relevant detection code in  
: > libvirt:
: >
: >
: > if (sscanf(help, "QEMU PC emulator version %u.%u.%u (kvm-%u)",
: >          &major, &minor, &micro, &kvm_version) != 4)
: >    kvm_version = 0;
: >
: > if (!kvm_version && sscanf(help, "QEMU PC emulator version u.%u.%u",
: >    &major, &minor, &micro) != 3)
: >    goto cleanup2;
: >
: > If I change SVN to 0.11.0-devel, that's going to break the KVM  
: > string although the QEMU string will continue to work.  Avi could  
: > potentially carry a patch to keep it 0.10.x and since kvm-%u will be  
: > used to identify features, that should keep things working.
: >
: >
: > Anyone have any objections/suggestions?
: >
: > Regards,
: >
: > Anthony Liguori
: >
: >
: 
: 
: 
: