My apologies. Please interpret this for me then: "If you write 99% of a source file". There's apparently a deeper meaning I'm not understanding.
>In the same way that if you proof read a book and find a spelling mistake, you don't get any copyright for it. Ok ... since you're pushing the issue and I work for a book publisher ... I can't resist. On some level they do and proof readers often make larger edits but because they are doing it on a work-for-hire basis the copyright is given up to their employer. The author themselves often loose their copyright ... that's what a publishing deal is all about. Most contracts eventually revert it back to the author under certain conditions. Had MAME started off by requiring contributors to assign their copyrights to someone or some legal entity representing MAME this whole issue would have been moot.
>This is the process that Haze is refusing to be involved with Indeed, and that's a dickish thing to do, but it doesn't necessarily make him wrong. Ultimately, it's not the contributor's legal responsibility to go through the code and figure that all out for you.
>You seem to be under the impression that someone incorrectly saying they are the sole copyright holder is illegal 'Saying' it isn't illegal (or whatever term you want to hash out) but distributing it as such with an incompatible license certainly is. So if you just want to attribute stuff and track who has ownership of what files then sure ... have at it. If you hope to someday use that as the basis of distributing the code under multiple licenses then you'd better be sure you aren't wrong.
Again, as I said in a response to RB that as a practical matter this isn't a problem. It's unlikely anyone would sue and any offending code is replaceable. As a legal matter, in terms of putting MAME on rock solid copyright grounds, I think it is and only a real code audit and unthinkable amount of detective work could make it so. Not that my opinion merits any weight but at some point it would be wise to do what Haze has supposedly done: scrape together some money/donations and get a legal opinion.
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