From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Greg KH Subject: Re: [PATCH] serial: sirf: update copyright years to 2014 Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 09:14:24 -0800 Message-ID: <20140214171424.GA26194@kroah.com> References: <1392214124-3427-1-git-send-email-21cnbao@gmail.com> <20140212141931.GA7688@kroah.com> <20140212143744.GA10095@kroah.com> <20140212161230.GA22431@kroah.com> <20140212163810.GA22377@kroah.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from mail.linuxfoundation.org ([140.211.169.12]:43659 "EHLO mail.linuxfoundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751277AbaBNRNG (ORCPT ); Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:13:06 -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 10:27:17AM +0800, Barry Song wrote: > 2014-02-13 0:38 GMT+08:00 Greg KH : > > 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, i am inviting our lawyer Cherrie into this, as she is maybe > busy, so we might wait some time. In my research, it's become apparent that the copyright notice should just be removed entirely from the files, as they don't mean anything from a legal standpoint, so updating them shouldn't really be done either, as they don't mean anything. Although one could argue, if they don't mean anything, updating it shouldn't matter, but I don't think that the transitive is true here... It will be interesting to find out what your lawyer says about this. thanks, greg k-h