From: Tomas Frydrych (tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net)
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 16:52:17 EDT
I am the culprit who removed the copyright notice from the files from
ttfps which are used in ttftool, I have done so without a malicious
intent, after some deliberation in the light of the "licence" with which
the program comes. The readme file from the package contains the
following statement:
<quote>
Copying
*******
This software is provided with no guarantee, not even of any kind.
Feel free to do whatever you wish with it as long as you don't ask me
to maintain it.
</quote>
I understood this as implying two things: (1) the code was placed
into a public domain; the statement effectively renders the copyright
notices meaningless, because "whatever" includes the removal of
them. (2) the author wanted to pretty much disassociate himself
from any responsibility for code once released.
Having extended the code, I assumed that the author would not want
to be associated with any new bugs, and felt it appropriate to
remove the copyright notices; without this step the author would
have been likely receiving numerous bug reports and requests for
enhacement.
Not having included the author in AW credits list was a _bad_
oversight, for which I appologize. I am also more than happy to have
the (c) lines included back in the files. However, I would like to point
out, without trying to excuse bad error of judgement on my part, that
if a persons wishes to maintain intellectual rights on software they
write and distribute, they do have to include meaningful licence; the
statement in the ttfps readme does not fall into that category.
Tomas Frydrych
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