Re: Copyright preambles in the sources

[antonio_duran@hotmail.com (Antonio Duran)]

"Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" <aek@vib.usr.pu.ru> wrote in message news:<mailman.1021590843.18249.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> Here was plenty of talk about the copyright issues from the user's viewpoint,
> but just now I faced a copyright issue as a developer, and need an advice or
> some explanation.
>   I constantly see in various sources a "copyright preamble". Although I fully
> respect the author's rights to put any comments into the sources, I deeply
> distaste those "copyright preambles" inside each source file. Therefore I wish
> to avoid such a practice in my own sources. But being substantially foreing
> to the whole Copyright/Patent/Intellectual_Property world (because of Soviet
> background), I don't understand why those preambles are so widespreading.
> why they appear even in the obviously non-commercial packages. And I fear to
> violate a rule when I don't feel the reason for it -;) .
>   So, why you, independent non-commercial developers, put the "copyright
> preambles" at the beginning of each file of the distributions? Is it a necessary
> thing? What dangers I invite if I do not include that preambles in each source
> file, but simply include a separate "copyright notice" file into the distribution?
> 
> 
> Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
> Saint-Petersburg
> Russia

I can only answer your question from my personal point of view so,
please, do not take this answer as a general case.

First, I think that there is a lot of confussion on what really free
software is. Perhaps this confussion has to do with the polymorphic
nature of the english word "free". Free software means that the
license of that software allows you or provides you the right to copy,
distribute, modify, or improve that software because you have access
to the source code. Free software does not mean that the software has
zero price. So there is nothing that precludes free software of being
commercial software.

Second, whenever I write software, I'd like to receive credit for what
I've done so I put a copyright notice on every file I write. And, I
like to make clear that I'm the author of that file (for the good and
for the bad) and I want to preserve my rights over my own work.
Moreover, I also make clear that the software has no warranties.

Third, the main reason for this is to preserve my right and the right
of those who use, modify, distribute or improve the work I originated
by avoiding that our collective work be patented by a third. Such a
patent will deny us the right to use our software.

Visit http://www.gnu.org to see what means free software and the kind
of licenses for free software and follow this link to know about the
harm that software patents could do:
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/danger-of-software-patents.txt