[4866] in Athena Bugs
Copyright notices in /mit/thesis template files
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
Fri May 4 00:36:30 1990
Date: Fri, 4 May 90 00:36:17 -0400
From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Anne Hunter has complained that the default copyright notices on the
titlepage for both the Scribe and TeX thesis templates are wrong for
both Course six and Course eight --- the copyright is assigned to MIT
instead of to the student, and there needs to be a messages allowing MIT
permission to make copies of the thesis, in whole or in part. She
seemed to be worried that a large number of students would hand in
thesis close to the deadline with the wrong titlepage, and that she
would have to reject the thesis until they fix them. Apparently one
student has already flamed her, saying ``But the Athena templates do it
this way; why should I have to change it?!?''
Since the MIT thesis guide does state that copyright should be assigned
to MIT, unless the department states otherwise, it is not clear that the
thesis template files are at fault. However, it should be noted that
Course Six produces the largest number of thesi per year, followed by
Physics in second place.
I suggest that at the very least, the README files in /mit/thesis
be changed to warn the user that he or she may have to modify the
copyright notices, since this seems to be a common mistake. We may also
want to change the default copyright notices in the templates so that
the copyright is assigned to the student, since a large majority of the
thesis that will be for departments that override the MIT thesis guide.
- Ted
P.S. I am currently in the process of revamping the TeX thesis template
to make it much more reasonable. (The current one is one large mess!)
Since I am told that /mit/thesis is ``owned'' by release engineering,
is bugs the right place for announcing the the changed thesis template?
