[klyrs]

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or portions of the Software.

If they aren't complying with that, then they're in violation of the MIT license. Further, by removing Andrew's copyright and claiming his work as their own, that runs afoul of copyright law independent of any software licensing considerations (e.g. the reason we're told to use an actual permissive license instead of declaring things "public domain"; things don't work that way in all jurisdictions).

If that is the case, legal action is warranted.

Edit: nanny's response is correct; compliance with MIT is a very low bar that seems to be satisfied. I still question the legality of their copyright claims.

[nanny]

They are complying, the original Zig license is at the bottom of the file lib/zen/std/LICENSE (complete with "Copyright (c) 2019 Andrew Kelley"). I just downloaded it from the Zen website, and the tarball is dated 2020-09-04.

[acqq]

> They are complying,

Are they, if they removed the Zig copyright from each file in the standard library?

[nanny]

Yes, because, as I explained above, they still retained the original Zig copyright in their LICENSE file. The MIT/Expat license doesn't say anything about the file headers. It only requires that "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

[pulse7]

Does a single notice in the lib/zen/std/LICENSE file satisfy the requirement "shall be included in all copies or substantial portions". If many (source) files are copied and if each file contains the copyright notice, then the copyright statement "shall be included in all copies" (or substantial portions) of these files - and not just in one file...

[pulse7]

"The single files (or substantial portions of them) are not what's being distributed in this case."

If the single files are not being distributed how do we know then, then header has been changed on single files?

On the other hand: if somebody received these individual files - they were also distributed... each one of them...

[nanny]

>Does a single notice in the lib/zen/std/LICENSE file satisfy the requirement "shall be included in all copies or substantial portions".

Yep. The single files (or substantial portions of them) are not what's being distributed in this case. The Software is the thing being distributed, and it meets the requirements as described in the license (that the original copyright and permission notice be included). Therefore, it is in compliance.

[dragonwriter]

If there is individual notice on the file because the file is a work individually licensed under MIT, removing it from the file is removing it from an MIT protected work in violation of the license.

That the individually-protected work is also included in an compilation which is itself licensed under MIT does not remove or loosen any licensing requirements on the smaller work.

[nanny]

>If there is individual notice on the file because the file is a work individually licensed under MIT, removing it from the file is removing it from an MIT protected work in violation of the license.

Why is that in violation of the license? The only condition specified in the MIT/Expat license is this:

>The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Each file is not "the Software". "The Software" means the Zig/Zen projects as a whole. The "above copyright notice and this permission notice" is included in the copy of Zen. Therefore, it is in compliance.

I wrote in another comment:

>In addition, the Zen headers say "This project may be licensed under the terms of the ConnectFree Reference Source License" and "See the LICENSE file at the root of this project for complete information". This statement is enough to imply that the project as a whole is covered by the specified LICENSE file.

[acqq]

> Each file is not "the Software".

Can you give any support for this which is not your own "I say so because that's how I understand what I have read"?

That is, can you give a link of some court case where your claim was confirmed, or a link to a project where some big company changed the copyright lines in some library source files, when these lines were previously MIT licensed?

If not, repeating your own claims in many posts here doesn't make your claims more believable.

I still understand that every source file (as in, having the lines that produce executable code) containing a copyright is a "software" where the copyright lines have to be preserved as soon as the author initially wrote the lines, and I need some independent evidence, as stated before, to be convinced otherwise.

[shawnz]

So how do you tell the difference between the files having been licensed individually or only the whole compilation having been licensed?

Here is some of the license text:

> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software") [...]

That seems to me to indicate that it applies to the whole software package and not any single file (unless you could call that single file a "software" in its own right, maybe?)

Meanwhile, the text in each individual file only says this:

> Copyright (c) 2015 Andrew Kelley

> This file is part of zig, which is MIT licensed. See http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

[dragonwriter]

> So how do you tell the difference between the files having been licensed individually or only the whole compilation having been licensed?

One way you could check is if each of the files has their own copyright and license notice, and the license notice includes, directly or by reference, terms which require preservation of the accompanying copyright notice.

[acqq]

I still think that:

"in all copies or substantial portions"

also means that every source file of the standard library or the header must keep the original copyright.

[nanny]

Why do you think that?

They are distributing a modified copy of the software and including the original copyright and permission notice. Therefore, they are in compliance. It's as simple as that.

If they were distributing the individual files (or "substantial portions" of them) without a copy of the original copyright and permission notice, then you'd be correct. But that's not the case here.

[dragonwriter]

> Why do you think that?

Because each source file on its own is a work subject to copyright, with a copyright notice and particular license attached, and the license attached requires retaining the notice.

The fact that they are also included in a compilation which, as a compilation, is separately subject to copyright and has it's own copyright notice and license attached, which happens to be the same license, doesn't change that one bit.