Today, the Software Freedom Law Center published Managing Copyright Information within a Free Software Project, a guide to help developers maintain the license and copyright notices associated with their projects.

From the guide’s introduction:

Nearly every free software project includes two types of legal information with its source code: the license(s) of the code and the copyright notices of contributing authors. As important as it is to maintain this information, it’s not always easy in a collaborative development process. With multiple developers contributing regularly to the code, some information can be left out or buried, and other information can be retained after it is no longer accurate. We wrote this guide to help projects minimize the problems and improve the usefulness of their legal information. It explains the purpose of license and copyright notices, the legal requirements behind them, and the current best practices for maintaining this information in a free software project’s source distribution.

Managing Copyright Information within a Free Software Project is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Aaron Williamson testified before the U.S. Copyright Office on Tuesday, in support of SFLC’s proposed exemption to the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The exemption, if granted, would make it legal for owners of personal computing devices to circumvent DRM for the purpose of installing alternative operating systems and applications.

The Software Freedom Law Center responded on Friday to comments submitted in the DMCA exemption rulemaking process by the Business Software Alliance, Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association of America, and several other content industry groups. SFLC’s full reply is here; it begins with this summary: