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As author of a LaTeX package (licensed under the LPPL), what is the best practice to properly attribute

  1. when I copy-paste and possibly modify parts of code from another LaTeX package (which is published under the LPPL);
  2. when I copy-paste and possibly modify code snippets from answers here on TeX.SX?

Is there any established form this would be handled in the community? Is a comment in the Source of my package at the point where such a snippet is re-used appropriate? What would be the wording of that comment?

Basically, my question is about a template of best practice, not legal advice. Particularly, if attribution is given by a comment in the source, I wonder of the following details:

  • does it mention the original author or only the project?
  • should it provide a URL to the original source?
  • does it make clear where the copy pasted part starts and ends?
  • does it have to make clear which modifications I did?

Or, to make it easy, how could such a attribution comment look like?

LaTechneuse
  • 1,339
  • I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Personally, I would add to the licence statement you have directing people to the LPPL text and asserting copyright etc. so that this statement indicates that some code is by ... in ... etc. and say that the relevant code is noted in comments in the source. If you use more extensive amounts of code, such that your package is a derived work, there is standard wording for that, and nothing in my comment should be taken to suggest that you should eschew the standard in such a case. – cfr Jul 25 '18 at 00:36
  • Thanks for referring me to opensource.SX. Generally, I find closing this question rather destructive. Proper handling of copyrights and attribution of authorship in source code should be an integral part of the culture of any open source community. I didn't mean asking for legal advice, rather, the issue is about valuing our community. As TeX.SX is one place where this community gets formed, I think questions like this should be debated here. It is all about agreeing on a "best practice". – LaTechneuse Jul 25 '18 at 13:57
  • No legal advice, just observation what is done. If you look through the source code of package, you often find comments like % The following code provided by Audrey http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/57247 or % Copyright notice: the following code is adapted from code from the % amsmath package. or % partly copied from enumerate.sty – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Jul 26 '18 at 10:38
  • I know you aren't asking about the legal aspect, but it is worth noting that content for TeX-sx is subject to a different license to the bulk of LaTeX material (LPPL), at least unless one gets permission to use it under a different license. Thus there are differences in requirement. – Joseph Wright Jul 26 '18 at 10:51
  • In addition to what @Joseph wrote, there is an established process to establish compatibility with the CC-BY-SA license described at https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses it might be worth for LPPL to be examined for this purpose. – François G. Dorais Jul 27 '18 at 21:17

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