Re: [devel] [PATCH 8/8] set.c: update copyright notice

[Alexey Tourbin <at@altlinux.ru>]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 03:56:22AM +0300, Dmitry V. Levin wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 03:48:28AM +0300, Alexey Tourbin wrote:
> [...]
> > The question is then what's the enough amount of work to become
> > a copyright holder.  I believe that one has to write a distinct
> > piece of code that's not been written before, and the code should
> > exercise a distinct feature or trait that's not been available
> > before.  Trivial changes, including trivial bugfixes, do not amount
> > for authorship and/or copyright.
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant

GNU criteria are somewhat controversial.

1) "more than around 15 lines" is not a definition, and it won't stand in court.
2) "minor changes by the same person can add up to a significant contribution"
is morally wrong.  As if I can make a significant contribution by constantly
reindenting the code, back and forth.  I agree that some calculations might
be going on here, but I don't believe that a series of trivial contributions 
could've summed up to a non-trivial one.

My own criteria is as follows:
1) Show me the piece(s) of code that you've actually written.
2) Show me how it makes a difference.