[csw-maintainers] [POLICY] opencsw-policy: The copyright notice

[Jonathan Craig]

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 8:26 AM, Peter FELECAN <pfelecan at opencsw.org> wrote:
> Maciej Blizinski <maciej at opencsw.org> writes:
>
>> There has been lately no progress on the issue on the initial patch.  The
>> current state of opinions about the latest version of the patch[1] is as
>> follows:
>>
>> Maciej Bliziński: For subsmission as presented
>> Peter Felecan: For submission as presented
>> Phil Brown: Against submission as presented
>>
>> The objection from Phil was that copyright is not necessary, while others
>> (also outside the policy team) believe it is.  There was a suggestion[2] to take
>> out the abstract from the patch.
>>
>> I did that, here's the patch which only sets the license.
>>
>> Policy team, RSVP.
>
> 1. copyright and license: alright for me, the only suggestion is to use
>   GPL 3 as is the more current.
>
> 2. abstract: call it what you want but we need an introductory text and
>   what was presented under the heading of "abstract" it's exactly that;
>   I don't understand why you removed it: the discussion implied 3
>   persons among which 2 were for keeping the abstract. It's that not
>   good enough?
>

I agree, a copyright is needed.  Without a specified copyright then
people who wish to build on our work are left with a conundrum.
Either they choose to see the lack of copyright as placing the work in
the public domain or they choose to see it as all rights reserved.
This would also jeopardize our efforts to evolve the document over
time as we would have to assume "public domain" or get the permission
of each persons submission to use/modify it at need.  Assuming "public
domain" leaves one open to legal issues in the future.

I also feel the abstract/preamble/forward as appropriate and necessary
but I don't really care what we call it.