66506 - Copyright in about: should be updated (2000 -> 2001)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

Should the copyright info on the about page be updated to say 2001?

Comment 1

[Henrik Gemal]

Attachment: Diff to fix copyright info

Comment 2

[Henrik Gemal]

Fixing this also take care of:
- http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65721
- http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65301

Comment 3

[Henrik Gemal]

Attachment: Better diff to fix all release notes URL's

Comment 4

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

Several comments :

1. please let the original #xxxxxx color values in the html ; I don't see why
   you turned "#ffffff" into "white" and not "#ff0000" into "red".
2. can you prettify your markup so lines are less than 80 chars long ?

you'll have my r= if that is done...

Comment 5

[Henrik Gemal]

Attachment: Even better diff (dont change colors or about document)

Comment 6

[Henrik Gemal]

FYI: I dont have cvs access so someone has to get sr and checkin

Comment 7

[Kathleen :Brade]

<disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer>
Actually I don't think we need to update the copyright (unless the files have
been changed?)  In the past, if I recall correctly, dmose has updated all of the
files (he has a script to do it).  This bug should probably go to him.

Comment 8

[Henrik Gemal]

what's the status here? dmose?

Comment 9

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

CCing Mitchell,as she has more expertise in what's required from a legal
standpoint.  I believe brade is right, though, that only files which have
changed need to have their copyright date updated, which would obviate the need
for any scriptage.  

FWIW, the scriptage I wrote to update the license boilerplate was extremely
specific to that particular update, and wouldn't be terribly useful for this,
though perhaps it could be adapted.

Comment 10

[Mitchell Baker]

Dumb question -- is this for a copyright notice in the about box for the entire
release, or for specific files?

Copyright notices often say "copyright mega-corp 1996-2001"

Comment 11

[Henrik Gemal]

I think i kind of forgot to say where I thought that the copyright was missing 
or wrong. It was only in the about: page.
Sorry about that.

With that in mind, is it possible to get r or sr?

Comment 12

[timeless]

we're abandoning language="javascript" in favor of violating ietf namespace by 
using type="text/javascript"; have a ball.

Comment 13

[Henrik Gemal]

Attachment: brand new patch with type=text/javascript

Comment 14

[timeless]

<a href="http://mozilla.org/"><img src="chrome://global/content/logo.gif" 
border="0" alt="Mozilla Logo" title="Mozilla Logo"></a>

+<li>Copyright &copy; 2001 by <a href="about:credits">Contributors</a> to the 
should probably be 1998-2001
support.com [talkback?] should be 1997-99 according to their about screen.

Comment 15

[Henrik Gemal]

Someone with legal insight:
should Mozilla "2001" be "1998-2001"
and
Talkback "1997-99"
??????

Comment 16

[Frank Hecker]

Well, I don't necessarily claim to have "legal insight", but here is my opinion 
of the question of copyright notices:

In a perfect world, the copyright notices for Mozilla would be done as follows:

* For notices referring to Mozilla as a whole, e.g., as in the "About" box, the 
copyright notice refers to all contributors and all files, so the notice should 
reference a year range beginning with the first year in which Mozilla code was 
created and ending with the current year. So for this the range 1998-2001 seems 
correct or at least plausible. (There may be some Netscape-developed code in 
current Mozilla that dates from before 1998, but I don't know for sure.)

* For non-Mozilla copyright notices in the About box (or similar places), e.g., 
the Talkback stuff or the Berkeley stuff, the year range should be whatever is 
on that material specifically, as referenced in its source file(s) and/or 
documentation. So, for example, the copyright notice for the Talkback stuff 
shouldn't reference a range ending in 2001 unless the Talkback stuff actually 
got changed in 2001, as referenced by its own copyright notices.

* For an individual source file under the NPL/MPL (or dual licenses referencing 
the NPL/MPL) the copyright notice in the boilerplate language refers 
specifically to material added by the Original Developer; see for example 
<http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/boilerplate-1.1/mpl.c>, noting the phrase "Portions 
created by ___ are Copyright ...". So the year range would start with the year 
in which the Original Developer had created the file, and end with the last year 
in which the Original Developer had made changes to the file.

Note that that ending year might not be the last year anyone made changes; if 
someone other than the Original Developer had made changes in a subsequent year, 
that would not IMO affect the year referenced by the Original Developer's 
copright notice.

(As a side note here, under the current Mozilla boilerplate scheme contributors 
other than the Original Developer don't have their own copyright notices; 
however this doesn't affect whether they have a valid copyright or not, since at 
least in the U.S. you don't actually need a formal notice in order to have a 
valid copyright. And if someone ever needed to establish who contributed what 
in a particular file -- and thus who held copyright to particular parts of 
the file -- then we could always go back to the CVS logs and look at the 
individual changes.)

Now I don't know if following the above scheme for each individual file is 
actually workable in practice. For example, it might be a pain to determine 
the last year in which the Original Developer made changes (as opposed to the 
last year in which the file got changed at all.) But if you wanted my opinion 
there it is :-)

Comment 17

[timeless]

Attachment: patch for 0.8 branch, a=asa, seeking official r=

Comment 18

[Henrik Gemal]

Attachment: even better 0.8 diff

Comment 19

[Fabian Guisset]

r=fabian after much headache to find out whether <script> can be nested inside
<a> ;-) answer is : it's legal :) so here is a r=

Comment 20

[Frank Hecker]

I'm unclear whether the patch proposed for r and sr approval is

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=24995

or

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=25008

In any case, I'm OK with the copyright changes, and with the other proposed 
changes as well (in both proposed patches), with one exception:

I'm a little curious as to why people want to change references to 
http://www.mozilla.org/ to http://mozilla.org/ (without the "www"), but since 
the other URL will work I'm OK with it in general. However, I _am_ concerned 
with changing "www.mozilla.org" to "mozilla.org" in the URLs referencing the MPL 
and NPL. That's because the MPL/NPL boilerplate in the source file license 
notices specifically refers to http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/ and 
http://www.mozilla.org/NPL/ as the URLs of the licenses. Hence I believe that in 
the about page copyright statement where you link to the MPL and NPL, you should 
use the exact same URLs as in the boilerplate, i.e., with the "www".

Comment 21

[timeless]

Attachment: let's keep www and aim for 80cols

Comment 22

[Frank Hecker]

The latest patch looks good to me. You have my OK for whatever it's worth.

Comment 23

[Frank Hecker]

Note to Mitchell: In terms of the copyright notices, this change has two 
effects:

1. It changes the copyright period in the Mozilla copyright statement from 
"2000" to "1998-2001" (to conform with the time period over which Mozilla 
development has taken place).

2. It changes the copyright period in the Support.com copyright  statement from 
"1997-2000" to "1997-1999" (for conformity with their own about statement, 
according to comments by timeless above).

As far as I can tell, no other language in the copyright notices has changed. 
That's why I believe this change is OK and can be approved without the need for 
any more extensive review.

Comment 24

[Mitchell Baker]

I get it.  Changing the Mozilla copyright makes it more accurate.  OK to check in.

I don't know anything about service.com, so can't comment on this.

Comment 25

[timeless]

fix for branch checked in.

Comment 26

[timeless]

fix for trunk checked in

Comment 27

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

vrfy fixed using 2001.05.25.10 mozilla bits [linux].