[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Replace "Fabrice Bellard" with "the FFmpeg developers" in the banner

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Friday 2010-02-12 09:23:27 +0100, Olivier Galibert encoded:
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 07:44:51AM +0100, Luca Abeni wrote:
> > Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote:
> > [...]
> > >>>FFmpeg is a collective effort so allowing a single name in a banner is
> > >>>not nice/fair towards the community of developers, also this is more
> > >>>correct for example when adding a new ff* tool (yes I have in mind
> > >>>ffprobe).
> > >>Well, I do not think that copyrights can be changed like this ;-)
> > >>IMHO, a change like this one is acceptable only if proposed by Fabrice
> > >>(or at least approved by Fabrice).
> > >
> > >Headers do not determine who has copyright over the file; they're
> > >simply informative.  Changing a header does not change the copyright
> > >of the file.
> > 
> > From a legal point of view, you are of course right.
> > But, right now there is a program that prints "Copyright (c) 2000-2010
> > Fabrice Bellard, et al."; after this patch, it will print a different
> > informative message. This is legal, but completely impolite (IMHO).
> 
> It may even be illegal, see GPL-2 2c.

Hi,

I asked Fabrice about this patch, follows his reply.

|Hi Stefano,
|
|You have my approval, but remove the "et al.". Moreover, verify that my
|name is still listed in the list of developers.
|
|Regards,
|
|Fabrice.
|
|Stefano Sabatini wrote:
|> Hi Fabrice,
|>
|> I'm one of the FFmpeg developers and I recently proposed this change:
|> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.devel/104164
|>
|> I did propose this as I believe that names in a FLOSS project are
|> usually a bad idea, also it looks quite unfair to me to show just one
|> name when the project has been developed by hundreds of contributors.
|>
|> Anyway, apart from legalia/copyright matters on which I'm not
|> competent at all, I would consider an impolite act to replace your
|> name in the banner without to ask you for permission.
|>
|> So I'm attaching the proposed patch, let me know what you think about
|> the application of such a change.
|>
|> All the best, regards.

I'm attaching an updated version of the patch.

Regards.
-- 
FFmpeg = Fascinating Faithless Murdering Prodigious Erotic Gangster
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