Re: Submitting a contrib script?

[Mark D. Baushke]

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Todd Denniston <address@hidden> writes:

> As I am also getting ready to send a script for contrib, I have two further
> questions:
> 1) does it have to be GPL or is LGPL also acceptable to the project?

The rest of the cvs project is GPL. Is your contribution some kind of
library that it needs to be released under the LGPL?

Recall that you retain the ability to release the same software with
multiple copyright and license disclaimers as the owner of the
copyright. However, once you release under the GPL or LGPL all works
derived from that copy will inherit the same license.

> 2) would the Copyright line be ok with "(C) 2004 US Department of Defense,
> Navy." or does it need some explicit " & FSF" section?  
> # License:      GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
> #
> # Copyright:    (C) 2004 US Department of Defense, Navy.

I am not a lawyer, so you should run this through your legal folks, but
something like this should work:

                --------------- cut here ---------------
  ########################################################################
  # <one line to give the files' name and brief idea of what it does.>
  # Copyright (c) <year> by <author>
  # All rights reserved.
  #
  # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
  # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  # the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
  # (at your option) any later version.
  #
  # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
  # GNU General Public License for more details.
  #
  # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  # along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  # Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
  #
  ########################################################################
                --------------- cut here ---------------

The latest boilerplate from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt should
be used as the above is just an example. And where <year> is the current
year (2004) and <author> is probably either your name or the 'US
Department of Defense, Navy' depending on how they want things handled.

If you wish, you may instead assign your copyright in this matter to the
FSF and replace that copyright line with 'Free Software Foundation, Inc.'
(but that is more paperwork).

If you want to release under the GPL, there should be no problem with
something like the above approach. 

However, Derek is the one who needs to determine if he will accept stuff
under the LGPL or not. (For what it may be worth, I would not have
problems seeing LGPL files under the contrib directory myself.)

> Man the fun with releasing things that you create on your employer's
> time is getting what they require and what the project require to line
> up. Then there is the actual permission and proof of. :)

Indeed, I wish you luck in your path.

        -- Mark
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