Re: company copyrights. Re: [PATCH] PM / Documentation: Update Srivatsa S. Bhat's email address

From: Rafael J. Wysocki
Date: Sun Jun 15 2014 - 18:39:36 EST


On Sunday, June 15, 2014 12:36:11 AM Pavel Machek wrote:
> On Mon 2014-06-09 13:28:36, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > On Monday, June 09, 2014 03:54:49 PM Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
> > > My @linux.vnet.ibm.com email address is going to disappear soon, as I will be
> > > beginning my M.S./PhD studies at MIT in a few months.
> >
> > Congratulations!
> >
> > > So update my email address in the documentation.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa.bhat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Signed-off-by: Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa@xxxxxxx>
> > > ---
> > >
> > > Documentation/power/suspend-and-cpuhotplug.txt | 2 +-
> > > 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> > >
> > > diff --git a/Documentation/power/suspend-and-cpuhotplug.txt b/Documentation/power/suspend-and-cpuhotplug.txt
> > > index e13dafc..3813703 100644
> > > --- a/Documentation/power/suspend-and-cpuhotplug.txt
> > > +++ b/Documentation/power/suspend-and-cpuhotplug.txt
> > > @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
> > > Interaction of Suspend code (S3) with the CPU hotplug infrastructure
> > >
> > > - (C) 2011 Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa.bhat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > + (C) 2011-2014 Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa@xxxxxxx>
> >
> > I'm actually unsure if updating copyright notices like that is OK.
> >
> > Yes, you're moving, but the address in the notice documents the status at
> > the time you added it.
>
> Well, invalid addresses in the comments are useless.
>
> If copyright is _yours_, updating the address is ok.

It may be OK from the legal standpoint, but only as long as you change it to
your private address (that is, one that you own personally). Also it is
changing history retroactively which I don't really find helpful.

> If copyright is your company's, you should probably say that plainly, not
> just by email address.
>
> (C) 2011 IBM (Srivatsa...)
>
> is what people do.

Yes, that's the preferred way to do that.

Rafael

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