Re: outdated legal notice in SGML docs?

Hi!

While working on automating our PDF doc building for the website I
noticed that we seem to ship with outdated legal information in the docs.

http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/

(this also matches up with:
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=blob_plain;f=COPYRIGHT;hb=HEAD)

seems to be our current licence text - however in the SGML docs we
actually have(pointer to the html generated source here):

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/LEGALNOTICE.html

which is differing in subtile ways (not mentioning the postgresql
licence but rather refering to a "licence from the university of
california") and also having different copyright year references/texts.

This seems to be wrong in all branches and has the additional problem
that the Copyright year on the backbranches is always out-of-date - for
example:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/LEGALNOTICE.html

will have 2009 for 8.4.11 which was released in 2012...

any thoughts on what the correct way to fix this is?

Stefan

On tor, 2012-05-17 at 16:48 -0400, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> Hi!
>
> While working on automating our PDF doc building for the website I
> noticed that we seem to ship with outdated legal information in the docs.
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/
>
> (this also matches up with:
> http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=blob_plain;f=COPYRIGHT;hb=HEAD)
>
> seems to be our current licence text - however in the SGML docs we
> actually have(pointer to the html generated source here):
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/LEGALNOTICE.html
>
> which is differing in subtile ways (not mentioning the postgresql
> licence but rather refering to a "licence from the university of
> california") and also having different copyright year references/texts.

I removed the extra half sentence about the "license from the
university ...", which didn't really serve any purpose. I think the
rest is fine. The copyright notices don't need to be spelled exactly
the same, I think.

I think the COPYRIGHT file is wrong in that it claims UCB copyright only
until 1994.

> This seems to be wrong in all branches and has the additional problem
> that the Copyright year on the backbranches is always out-of-date - for
> example:
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/LEGALNOTICE.html
>
> will have 2009 for 8.4.11 which was released in 2012...
>
> any thoughts on what the correct way to fix this is?

I've fixed this in all the active back branches. The copyright tool in
src/tools/ does inform about doing these changes, but whoever does them
has apparently not read that.

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 12:16:41AM +0300, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > This seems to be wrong in all branches and has the additional problem
> > that the Copyright year on the backbranches is always out-of-date - for
> > example:
> >
> > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/LEGALNOTICE.html
> >
> > will have 2009 for 8.4.11 which was released in 2012...
> >
> > any thoughts on what the correct way to fix this is?
>
> I've fixed this in all the active back branches. The copyright tool in
> src/tools/ does inform about doing these changes, but whoever does them
> has apparently not read that.

I didn't think we wanted to update back branch copyright end dates
because that would effect thing like psql \copyright display, and the
risk didn't seem worth it.

Do we want back-branches updated in the future?

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +

Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 12:16:41AM +0300, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>> I've fixed this in all the active back branches. The copyright tool in
>> src/tools/ does inform about doing these changes, but whoever does them
>> has apparently not read that.

> I didn't think we wanted to update back branch copyright end dates
> because that would effect thing like psql \copyright display, and the
> risk didn't seem worth it.

> Do we want back-branches updated in the future?

We have never done that in the past, and I don't think we should start
now. What I thought Peter was complaining about was that legal.sgml
had been missed in the *head* branch. However, a look in the git
history shows that hasn't happened since 2005, so it seems like the
current process is OK.

regards, tom lane

On tor, 2012-06-28 at 20:14 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 12:16:41AM +0300, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > > This seems to be wrong in all branches and has the additional problem
> > > that the Copyright year on the backbranches is always out-of-date - for
> > > example:
> > >
> > > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/LEGALNOTICE.html
> > >
> > > will have 2009 for 8.4.11 which was released in 2012...
> > >
> > > any thoughts on what the correct way to fix this is?
> >
> > I've fixed this in all the active back branches. The copyright tool in
> > src/tools/ does inform about doing these changes, but whoever does them
> > has apparently not read that.
>
> I didn't think we wanted to update back branch copyright end dates
> because that would effect thing like psql \copyright display, and the
> risk didn't seem worth it.
>
> Do we want back-branches updated in the future?

I think we should update at least COPYRIGHT and doc/src/sgml/legal.sgml,
which are the most user-facing files. Updating all the source files is
probably not necessary.

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 11:52:58PM +0300, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On tor, 2012-06-28 at 20:14 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 12:16:41AM +0300, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > > > This seems to be wrong in all branches and has the additional problem
> > > > that the Copyright year on the backbranches is always out-of-date - for
> > > > example:
> > > >
> > > > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/LEGALNOTICE.html
> > > >
> > > > will have 2009 for 8.4.11 which was released in 2012...
> > > >
> > > > any thoughts on what the correct way to fix this is?
> > >
> > > I've fixed this in all the active back branches. The copyright tool in
> > > src/tools/ does inform about doing these changes, but whoever does them
> > > has apparently not read that.
> >
> > I didn't think we wanted to update back branch copyright end dates
> > because that would effect thing like psql \copyright display, and the
> > risk didn't seem worth it.
> >
> > Do we want back-branches updated in the future?
>
> I think we should update at least COPYRIGHT and doc/src/sgml/legal.sgml,
> which are the most user-facing files. Updating all the source files is
> probably not necessary.

OK, I updated the copyright tool to mention this for back branches.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +