From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Greg KH Subject: Re: [PATCH] serial: sirf: update copyright years to 2014 Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 08:38:10 -0800 Message-ID: <20140212163810.GA22377@kroah.com> References: <1392214124-3427-1-git-send-email-21cnbao@gmail.com> <20140212141931.GA7688@kroah.com> <20140212143744.GA10095@kroah.com> <20140212161230.GA22431@kroah.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from mail.linuxfoundation.org ([140.211.169.12]:50464 "EHLO mail.linuxfoundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751914AbaBLQgy (ORCPT ); Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:36:54 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-serial-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-serial@vger.kernel.org To: Barry Song <21cnbao@gmail.com> Cc: "linux-serial@vger.kernel.org" , DL-SHA-WorkGroupLinux , Barry Song On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:26:35AM +0800, Barry Song wrote: > > Well, your 2012 change doesn't seem to be "significant" to warrent a > > normal copyright update, but the update is usually "less strict" than an > > original mark, so that might be ok, now that I review these closer. > > > > But I'd still prefer to get the opinion of your lawyer about this. > > Greg, thanks. i will ask csr lawyer to give some feedback if i can :-) > > i am not an expert of copyright and i am really ignorant on it. in my > shallow understand, it seems it is difficult to evaluate what is > "significant" and what is not important as it highly depends on the > personal opinion? is this something like "there are a thousand Hamlets > in a thousand people's eyes"? It does "depend", but the "general" rule that most everyone follows, and what I have been advised to stick to, is "1/3 of the file is modified/added to" by a company/developer. If that happens, then a copyright mark is allowed. That has worked well over the many years of me having to deal with this, but the issue of "extending" the mark hasn't really been discussed, so I don't know if that same rule applies here or not. Feedback from your lawyer would be great to have on this, thanks. greg k-h