[U-Boot-Users] [PATCH 04/10 v2] [ARM] TQMA31: add new board with i.MX31 processor

[Jerry Van Baren <gerald.vanbaren@ge.com>]

Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Jul 2008, Jens Gehrlein wrote:
> 
>> diff --git a/board/tqc/tqma31/Makefile b/board/tqc/tqma31/Makefile
>> new file mode 100644
>> index 0000000..f7e17c8
>> --- /dev/null
>> +++ b/board/tqc/tqma31/Makefile
>> @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
>> +#
>> +# Copyright (C) 2008, Guennadi Liakhovetski <lg@denx.de>
>> +# Copyright (C) 2008, Jens Gehrlein <sew_s@tqs.de>
> 
> Thanks for the credit, but, although IANAL, I think, one does not _have_ 
> to preserve the copyright of the original file when it gets copied to a 
> new one. Otherwise most open-source files would have a veeeery long list 
> of Copyrights:-) Am I right?
> 
> Thanks
> Guennadi

IANAL, but I play one on Groklaw sometimes, much to PJ's chagrin. ;-)

This is a squishy area.  It is dependent on what of the original work 
survives the modification and whether the surviving pieces are 
copyrightable.  It also depends on what country you are contemplating 
suing in.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_and_exceptions_to_copyright>

Things that must be done in certain ways are not copyrightable, so 
Makefiles are pretty marginal to start with IMHO.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality>

My opinion is to leave the original copyright notice in there and err on 
the side of preserving reasonable copyright notices.  The lawyers will 
be happy to tell us that we did it wrong if it ever came to a lawsuit, 
and I would prefer that they tell us that we had a useless copyright 
notice in the file rather than tell us that we should have had a notice 
but didn't...

Best regards,
gvb