Re: That dwarf2read patch i just submitted

[Andrew Cagney <ac131313 at cygnus dot com>]

Stan Shebs wrote:
> 
> Kevin Buettner wrote:
> >
> > > The patch is actually <30 lines of code, and thus, shouldn't require
> > > copyright assignment.
> >
> > I'm not sure what the metric is for requiring a copyright assignment,
> > but I thought it was lower than 30.  (Perhaps Andrew could let us know?)
> 
> GCC uses 12 lines, when I was maintaining GDB I used a one-page rule.
> This is just a first approximation though; a two-page file which is 90%
> cloned from an existing GDB file hardly counts as two pages of creative
> work, while daughter-of-DeCSS in 11 lines should almost certainly have a
> copyright assignment.
> 
> Remember that the purpose of the FSF policy is to keep GDB free of legal
> disputes over code ownership.  If the claim to ownership is weak, or the
> contributor died leaving no heirs, or the code is of little intrinsic value,
> etc, then there's very little risk of any problem.  (Note that having the
> copyright assignment is no guarantee that a dispute won't arise; the
> assigner might claim to have been misled by the FSF, or it might be
> found that the assigner wasn't the actual copyright owner after all.)
> So we mainly need to be prudent and exercise common sense when looking
> at contributions.

Personally I'm more paranoid.  I think that deciding things based on a
number of lines is pretty arbitrary and I don't actually remember anyone
quoting some some absolute number of lines.  Anyway, I personally look
at things asking if it is an ``original work''.

A new function or a new slab of code, I think, would normally constitute
an ``original work''.  A 500 line patch that is changing all instances
of color to colour most likely isn't :-)

A better person to ask is most likely JimB who tends to take care of
assignment issues.

	Andrew
(who doesn't know any lawyers)