[Python-legal-sig] Copyright page in the documentation

M.-A. Lemburg mal at egenix.com
Sat Nov 23 01:21:20 CET 2013


On 22.11.2013 23:50, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Refocussing on one of Anatoly's points (and without cross-posting :-)):
> 
> The page "Copyright" in the documentation claims that the Python code
> and documentation is (c) the PSF
> (see http://docs.python.org/3/copyright.html ).
> 
> However, this is not true, and it is not what the LICENSE says: the
> LICENSE says the PSF grants the rights to the end user (which is ok,
> thanks to the CLAs). The LICENSE doesn't claim the PSF owns the
> copyright (which it doesn't, since there's no copyright assignment).
> 
> How should we change the page above? Is it ok to change:
> 
>   Copyright © 2001-2013 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
> 
> to e.g.:
> 
>   Copyright © 2001-2013 Core Python Developers and Contributors. All
>   rights reserved.
> 
> Or would another wording be preferrable?

I'm not sure this would be correct, since the copyright on the
page refers to the distributions, not their contents.

Copyright is a bit tricky in this respect: the distribution file has
a copyright/license and the contents of that distribution may have
another set of copyrights/licenses.

If you are allowed to create distributions of some software (which
the PSF is via the CLAs), the distribution you create is
copyrightable as well. You can own the copyright to the distribution
without owning the copyright of the included works.

> (note: I'm not trying to discuss the other copyright lines - before
> year 2000 - before I don't have any info about that)
> 
> (Terry Reedy points there's also the doc footer which says "©
> Copyright 1990-2013, Python Software Foundation")

This should probably just link to the copyright page. The PSF was
founded in 2001, so the 1990 date is wrong anyway.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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