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Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 04:39:12 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: john-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: copyright and license statements

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 06:02:03AM +0100, magnum wrote:
> Another example, here is the current NT_fmt comments:
> 
>  /* NTLM patch for john (performance improvement)
>   *
>   * Written by Alain Espinosa <alainesp at gmail.com> in 2007.  No copyright
>   * is claimed, and the software is hereby placed in the public domain.
>   * In case this attempt to disclaim copyright and place the software in the
>   * public domain is deemed null and void, then the software is
>   * Copyright (c) 2007 Alain Espinosa and it is hereby released to the
>   * general public under the following terms:
>   *
>   * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
>   * modification, are permitted.
>   *
>   * There's ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, express or implied.
>   *
>   * (This is a heavily cut-down "BSD license".)
>   *
> + * UTF-8 support and performance tweaks by magnum 2011, same terms as
> above.
> + *
>   */
> 
> I did not want to repeat the same text... so does this "same terms as
> above" make sense? Or should I change to this:
> 
>   * Written by Alain Espinosa <alainesp at gmail.com> in 2007 and
>   * modified by magnum in 2011.  No copyright is claimed, and the
>   ...

I'd appreciate it if you clarify this as you propose - and don't forget
to add a copyright statement to the license fallback too.  Like this:

 * Written by Alain Espinosa <alainesp at gmail.com> in 2007 and
 * modified by magnum in 2011.  No copyright is claimed, and the
 * software is hereby placed in the public domain.
 * In case this attempt to disclaim copyright and place the software in the
 * public domain is deemed null and void, then the software is
 * Copyright (c) 2007 Alain Espinosa
 * Copyright (c) 2011 magnum
 * and it is hereby released to the general public under the following terms:
 *
 * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
 * modification, are permitted.

BTW, one of several reasons why I no longer suggest the public domain +
license fallback approach for new contributions (and instead suggest
copyright + permissive license right away) is that when the code is then
modified by someone else, we arrive at even more unusual wording (like
above) - and being unusual is bad for legal stuff.  But let's go with
this for now for files already with this sort of statements.

Thanks,

Alexander

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