Re: [libiberty copyright assignment audit] cp-demangle.c status

[neroden at twcny dot rr dot com (Nathanael Nerode)]

Robert Dewar said:
>Note that the copyright notice has nothing to do with whether or not it 
>is assigned.
>The actual copyright status of any file is determined independently of 
>any
>notice in the file itself.

While I what you mean, this isn't actually quite correct, as I 
discovered.  The issue lies in copyright assignments which assign "all 
changes made to GCC..." or some such.  In this case the question of 
whether the file is part of GCC becomes paramount.  

If the file itself claims to be part of GCC, as well as being 
distributed with GCC, I think that's quite sufficient to establish that 
the file is 'part of GCC'.

If on the other hand, the file claims that it is a separate program, and 
does not claim that it is part of GCC, then there is some question as to 
whether it is in fact part of GCC or not.  (Normally I would say 
that being distributed in the tarball for X would establish something 
as being 'part of X', but there are numerous examples explicitly to the 
contrary in the GCC tarballs.)  This status affects the impact of 
the copyright assignment statements.  :-)  Gross, eh?

It's the (former) absence of the 'part of GNU CC' phrase in the 
file which is the actual issue for the copyright assignment status, 
rather than the (former) claim that it was copyright CodeSourcery.

>It is of course important that the notice in the file reflect
>the actual status.
Indeed. :-/

-- 
Nathanael Nerode  <neroden at gcc.gnu.org>
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html