Re: [PATCH 3/4] gnu: Add German Aspell dictionary.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Alex Kost <address@hidden> skribis:

> John Darrington (2016-08-28 15:41 +0300) wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 12:20:45PM +0300, Efraim Flashner wrote:
>>      > +(define-public aspell-dict-de
>>      > +  (aspell-dictionary "de" "German"
>>      > +                     #:version "20030222-1"
>>      > +                     #:sha256
>>      > +                     (base32
>>      > +                      
>> "01p92qj66cqb346gk7hjfynaap5sbcn85xz07kjfdq623ghr8v5s")))
>>      don't forget your copyright line. Otherwise looks good.
>>
>> I didn't forget.  But I don't consider these 6 lines to be in any respect
>> novel, creative or original.  The FSF guidelines for what is regarded as
>> "legally significant" for copyright purposes mentions the limit of 15 lines.
>>
>> In fact, I challenge anyone to offer a definition of aspell-dict-de which
>> works in Guix AND satisfies our rather strict coding style, and does not
>> differ from the above, except in whitespace.
>>
>> In other words, there is nothing novel or creative in what I have written.
>> Thus, is would be dishonest (perhaps illegal?) for me to claim copyright on
>> this work.
>
> I think this patch deserves it.  My understanding is we just don't have
> a policy on adding copyright lines: some people add a copyright line
> even for a simple package update.

John is right; simple package updates are not legally significant
either.  But then I think “too many” copyright lines is better than not
enough, and it’s not worth bothering.

Ludo’.