Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Two question which I have to pass on

[Karl Berry]

    slight confusion

More than slight!  Sorry, I missed that amidst the lengthy examples.

However, as far as I know it's basically the same story: the legal
requirement is that you preserve existing copyright notices when making
modifications.  In fact, the GPL and virtually every other license I've
seen require this.  Years can't just be deleted whimsically, no matter
how useless they are in practice.

I guess if there is a single copyright holder (e.g., the FSF or the
author), and you are the author or acting on the c.h.'s behalf, it might
be permissible.  I really doubt it, though.

    Is there a legal contact we could ask?

Possibly.  But please start by formulating your proposal concisely, and
please look at loc.gov to see if there is any basis for such a thing.
It is necessary to do homework before taking up precious legal time
... the backlog of legal questions is immense.

    couple of lawyers who work with them privately.

Usually Eben and/or another person (it varies over time) at the SFLC.

    I wouldn't want this to be some massive affair, with things going
    back and forth and people wasting time on it. 

Too late :).

    It's a really a very trivial matter. 

Right.

    However, it would be nice if we could compose an
    argument and send it to one of the lawyers for a quick response,
    even if that turns out to be a prima facie rejection.

Getting a quick response from a lawyer is not to be expected.  Anyway,
I'd write to rms first (if you can convince me, to begin with :) since I
wouldn't feel right about imposing on a lawyer without his say-so.

karl