On Fri, 16 Nov 2007, Alistair Crooks wrote:

> On 15/11/2007, Masao Uebayashi <uebayasi@gmail.com> wrote:
>> BTW - some of your code (lib/librefuse for example) have non-ASCII
>> characters.  I think it's against NetBSD code convention. :)
>
> There is one character (the "Copyright symbol") in the leading comment
> block, which could be considered to be "non-ASCII" i.e. not in the
> range 0 to 127.
>
> For the reason why I do that, please take a look at the wikipedia entry:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
>
> specifically the last sentence of the part about the copyright symbol,
> (which unfortunately needs a citation):

Wasn't that awfully close to misquoting as the next paragraph states that 
the notice is implicit and is hence not needed according to the Berne 
Convention? 
(When used as support for introducing the unicode character almost looking 
like (c))

I do not know whether another Internet citation would hold any validity:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

> Whether or not that falls into NetBSD 's coding conventions or not,
> it's there for protection.

One might argue that:
a) The copyright is implcitly given and could be left out (but it does 
look professional).
b) Plenty of prior art exists for "(c)" although never taken to court per 
se I assume a lot of code has passed through the courtrooms with the "(c)" 
(The BSD source itself?)
c) The word "Copyright" could be used rather than a fancy abbreviation.

I am pro-unicode but I do not think that is the way to convince the world.

My apologies but such arguments on a friday afternoon brings out my inner 
troll ;-)

Rgds,
Claus

-- 
Portions of this text is Copyright 2007 by Claus Andersen
and released into the public domain

The views and opinions expressed herein are... well you know the drill.