[Savannah-hackers-public] License and Copyright syntax question

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello,

A few nit-picking questions regarding evaluation of copyright and license 
syntax in submitted projects.

This relates to few projects I'm evaluating, especially:
https://savannah.gnu.org/task/index.php?13269
But also to the semi-automated evaluation script I've sent earlier.

All these issues are two-fold:
1. When manually evaluation a project, should these be raised as items to be 
fixed?
2. When using the script, should these be flagged or automatically accepted?


-1-
Is the "(C)" part in "Copyright (C) 2014" required, highly-recommend, or 
optional ?
My regex currently requires '\([Cc]\)' .


-2-
Is it valid to write: "Copyright (C) 2014 by it's authors."
Followed by "See AUTHORS file".


-3-
Is it valid to write: "Copyright 2009-2014 <address@hidden>" ?
I recall there's a complication regarding listing years as a range.


-4-
Is it valid to write:
"*  Some rights reserved. See COPYING, AUTHORS.
 *  This file may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public
 *  License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software Foundation
 *  and appearing in the file COPYING included in the packaging of
 *  this file."

4a) is a valid license statement?
4b) is it acceptable for GNU Savannah or should we ask to change the wording to 
the standard broiler-plate text?


-5-
Is it acceptable for copyright to appear not at the top of the file ?
5a) is it valid copyright ?
5b) is it acceptable for GNU Savannah ?


Thanks,
 - Assaf