Copyright notice referring a company other than Sun

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Phil,

On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 11:13 -0700, Phil Race wrote:
> I think it likely matters to (say) commercial licensees who also get the 
> JDK code
> to know that Sun has a copyright in the file, or even just use the 
> binaries created
> from those sources, which is why I think we'd always want it to be present.

Sure, but that doesn't really impact the public project. That only
really matters for your proprietary internal fork of the code. If you
wanted to you could just have a script add such a line to the whole
codebase when you turn it proprietary.

> And I don't understand the apparent legal nuances of this :
>  >they aren't granted the actual copyright, just a grant to the rights 
> associated with it

As far as I understands it, but I could ask someone more legally
schooled, it just means the copyright (statement) itself stays with the
original contributor, only some of the rights associated with that
copyright (statement), like determining the distribution policy, are
shared with Sun through the SCA. There is a FAQ about it here:
http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/contributor_agreement.jsp

Cheers,

Mark