Re: Copyright Notice

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

Paul Merrell <marbux@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Paige,
> 
> The most common apporach in the open source world is to include with
> your source code a single plain text file named "COPYING.txt" that
> includes the licenses from the original auhor and any subsequent
> authors' licenses.
> 
> FWIW, I'm a retired lawyer but am no longer licensed to dispense legal
> advice. There is very little litigation involving open source
> licenses. What there is usually involves "copyleft" licenses like the
> GPL that require publication of any modified source code and the main
> issue is almost invariably non-publication of source code by those who
> modify it. The more permissive licenses like the MIT license seldom
> wind up in a court room.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Paul

The problem I have is that I am not distributing my code as a complete codebase at this time, but rather as patch files.

I have included the MIT License at the end of my patch file, but once the patch is applied to the Lua codebase my patch file with the licence is no longer needed. This is why I was asking if it was okay to simply add my copyright to the default license included at the end of lua.h.

I did a bit more searching online and found better results then I did last night, perhaps searching when I wake up and not right before bed was a better idea! It seems my idea of simply adding my copyright notice after the PUC-Rio one is a recommended method.

People also made the same point you did about how the permissive licenses are not being likely to wind up in court. I just wanted to ensure I was doing the "right thing", I doubt I would ever remove the PUC-Rio copyright as long as Lunia is based on Lua... I really appreciate the work done on Lua and am happy to give credit where it is due!

Thank you for your feedback Paul, it is very appreciated! :)

~pmd