Re: How to properly (re-)license a theme
Reply #23 –
False.
You'll find millions of lines of code for which if you'd go that way, you'd remove everything.
The license has stated what are its requirements. You need to respect them, those notices do not have to obey to any antiquated - and I believe, unapplicable to software license requirements - stuff. They're valid requirements as they are. The license told you black on white.
Browsing the source in a repo is not even close to the same as distributing the package. The copyright/license would be in the root directory and displayed prominently. If that didn't count, then viewing images individually wouldn't count. That's a straw argument there.
No. It's important. People take files individually. Also repos may have more than one license. We have already several subdirectories with their own licensing. We have individual files, with different licenses and/or different notices.
For a theme, it's unlikely to ever be the same. But for medium/big projects, it absolutely is.
then someone decided they wanted to distribute a diff of your color variant to work with their mod. Now you have 6 or 7 copyright notices.
You just made my point above: yes, they can distribute even separately. That's why it's important to have notices in the files themselves, at least for core files. Otherwise files end up with unlicensed. (though for diffs that will always happen. But at least for files, it shouldn't.)
People have the right to do that. And I do not agree with stripping down notices if they put them in.
It is certainly respecting the license. It is respecting the copyright holders. I am not making up interpretations of the license. These are interpretations by lawyers and the writers of the licenses.
I am well aware. They are not applicable the way you think they are. And they are not applicable to normal BSD notices.
I am well aware of BSD licensing being respected one-by-one, every single copyright notice. With by the way, the help of lawyers. I am well aware of serious issues starting up in communities when someone didn't think enough and made a patch to remove BSD copyright notices of the authors.
*cough* and I wasn't thinking at some corporation we might know, even. 
I didn't say it should be done on Elkarte. The entire discussions comes from Emanuele's copyright issue. That number of (c) lines can grow quickly. If, for instance, every contributor added their own copyright line (which they'd have the right to do).
Yes, they do have the right to. I don't see the "problem" you need to "fix". Just talk to them if you have a better suggestion for their work.
On the other hand, think in practical terms. Just going down imagination and making up huge scenarios you'd "fix" is not leading anywhere.
Practically. For a small project, it is highly unlikely you will really have cases. (i.e. a theme)
For a medium project, development policies on licensing/copyright have their own guidelines with which they just don't accept patches/integrations/whatever with licensing that doesn't follow the project guidelines. (i.e. Elk)
Read the readme I left in the SMF repo. It's a few phrases.
For big projects, it gets messy again.
That can be confusing on what is copyrighted.
You (almost) never know anyway what exactly is copyrighted by who. Don't imagine the notices tell you exactly the copyright holders. I can write @copyright bluemonkey and you still should respect it.
By the way, a central file for them makes that "issue" worse.
So the authors decide that they should add what is copyrighted by whom at the top of the file or above the functions that they created. Now you have 3 lines for each copyright explaining it.
They have the right to. You have the right to tell them why it'd be a better idea to do differently. You don't "just get away" with their statements.
And yes, it has even happened, but not for small, but for (very) big projects. Lawyers have kept all appropriate BSD copyright notices lines from the authors intact.
And yes, there are cases when you can adjust them. And yes, there are cases where they're not applicable at all.
It depends.