Re: [Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of Kavlon Image Gallery

[Loic Dachary]

Michael writes:
 > My README did mention it was under the GPL in a very terse way. I added a
 > copy of GPL.txt to the tarball and copied the short GPL statement to the
 > index.php file. I'm also putting a copyright notice and a line stating the
 > program the file is from into each include. Because during development I
 > like to break every function and object into it's own file (which works
 > well in PHP) I don't want to put the 12 line statement into each
 > include. It'd simply be to spammy. If this will work I'll go ahead and
 > retar my last version and resubmit.

        Adding comments does not hurt. Please understand that a file that
does not have a copyright notice is not covered by the GNU GPL. That may
be harmless for non significant files such as README. It may be a serious
drawback for a file containing a function that is central to the software,
even if it is a small one.

        Say, for instance, that someone is willing to reuse a piece of
code that is in a specific file that does not have the copyright notice.
>From a strictly legal point of view she has no right to do it because
it's not covered by the GNU GPL. Maybe it does not matter to you but
it may be a drawback for some people.

        I'm not saying that the project will be refused by Savannah if
you decide to ommit the copyright notice in some places ;-) I'm only trying
to convince you that these copyright notices are not just annoyances, they
have a well defined and important purpose.

        Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  address@hidden
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