Subject: [bug#39522] When to add a copyright line?

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 15:04:06 +0100

Hello!

> Brice Waegeneire <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> I wrote a new patch with your suggestion.
>
> Thank you! I applied it as 81565d23df3080b4d43d2ce0bfa49251827a34e9.
>
>> Sorry for the missing copyright lines in the previous patches you
>> merged, I thought it was non-mandatory on trivial modifications.
>
> I honestly do not know if it is mandatory in this case. However, trivial
> modifications may pile up and it could become a concern at some point.

FWIW, I agree with both of you.  :-)

Technically, a contribution is not considered “legally significant” if
it is below 15 lines of code or so (info "(maintain) Legally
Significant").

Furthermore, copyright only applies to things that are “inventive”,
which typically means there’s more than one way to do it.  Thus, one
could argue about whether some of our package definitions are
copyrightable at all (in the EU, there’s a “sui generis” database right
though, so it could fall under that, but IANAL.)

Anyway, long story short: I agree with Nicolas that it’s easier to just
always add a copyright line, and it’s better than forgetting to add one.

Ludo’.