Viktor Szakáts wrote:
If the license doesn't change anything, we probably shouldn't have one at
all, so I hope we agree that it's there to use it :) no offence meant.
Brgds,
Viktor
Well, the license DOES mean something. The GPL requires that copyrights
are carried forward into the borrowed code. If you live in a country
that signed the original Berne Convention, or has signed it since it's
inception, your code is automatically copyrighted the moment you write
it. The list of countries that didn't sign yet is quite small.
If you find a module of yours being distributed with your copyright
removed, the copier has violated the GPL and has to get permission from
you directly to distribute your code. This is clear in the GPL. This is
one of the better things it does for us.
You have a right to license your code in many ways. One of the ways we
license is via the GPL, which allows other people to borrow your code,
but they have to follow the rules. If they don't follow the rules, you
have not given them permission to distribute your code. You have the
right to sue for profits created from this illegal distribution. This is
one of the reasons I would like to see many modules copyrights donated
to the FSF. They have lawyers to enforce such things.
But you are correct. The gentlemanly thing to do is to give credit to
the author in downline GPL usage. If we use code from any other project
and it is GPL code, I want everyone here to give credit and include the
original copyright in our source tree. I suspect that every GPL project
manager wants the same, but things happen without oversight or vision,
so we may have to be vigilant and authoratative to get things set straight.
Let's give them some time to correct this and then you can give me
examples and I'll take it up with their project manager.
And, yes, you are a MAJOR contributor to this project and you are very
much appreciated as are all of our contributors.
_______________________________________________
Harbour mailing list
Harbour@harbour-project.org
http://lists.harbour-project.org/mailman/listinfo/harbour
