On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 10:33 AM, Antoine Musso <hashar+wmf(a)free.fr> wrote:
Hello,
Jon Robson opened a task about it a year or so ago:
"Remove @author lines from code"
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T139301
MY understanding is that removing the @author @copyright tags in
MediaWiki code represent ownership of the original code placed under the
GPL. Subsequent modifications being derivative products.
I am not a lawyer, but by dropping the copyright information, I highly
suspect that will be a breach of the license.
We also had a conversation about the CREDITS file:
https://lists.gt.net/wiki/wikitech/714928
We've had the same discussion in the team earlier this year and I dug up this:
https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2012/ManagingCopyrightInformation…
The relevant part for us is this: "But be careful when removing the
notices of other developers. Since free software licenses require
licensees to preserve notices, wrongfully removing one is a violation
of the license from that contributor and may be copyright
infringement. If it’s absolutely clear that every remnant of a
developer’s contribution has been removed, then it is probably OK to
remove the associated copyright notice; otherwise, it’s best to keep
it around. However, a requirement to “preserve” or “reproduce” a
developer’s copyright notice does not necessarily require that the
notice be kept in exactly the same place it started; it’s usually
acceptable to move notices from individual source files to a central
attribution file, for example."
Cheers
Lydia
--
Lydia Pintscher -
http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
Product Manager for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
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