Bad, bad license

[rodot]

Thanks for that clarification
I have yet another question, hopefully the last one.
I took a look at the license headers in the arduino library... none all of them have one, but the ones who do have something like that:

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/*
  Printable.h - Interface class that allows printing of complex types
  Copyright (c) 2011 Adrian McEwen.  All right reserved.

  This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
  License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
  version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

  This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
  Lesser General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
  License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
  Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
*/

What I don't understand is that there is a copyright while it's released under LGPL, which is copyleft. I searched on Internet but didn't find the answer... what's the purpose of the copyright?
By the way if I add a header like this one to each file in the Gamebuino library, I can't only put my name as other people did improvement to that code. What am I supposed to do?

[BozoDel]

Well, first thing is, it's not really really necessary to put a header on each file stating the license and the copyright, but it helps keep track of who did what and when, and keep it clearly separated when a software has pieces of code in different licenses.

Now, the answer of your question is, copyleft uses copyright do do its thing. There are copyright laws, but no such thing as a copyleft law. The only way I can license my code is by owning it, and I own it thanks to copyright law. And if someone violates the license, making a proprietary, closed version of a GPL program, for example, the author can sue the violator for copyright infringement.

It's not mandatory to put a copyright notice, but again, it's advised, cause those large collaborative projects can become a mess, and no one will know who did what. Sometimes it doesn't really matter, but it doesn't hurt to make things clear. I *think* that, if you modify that file, you could add your own copyright notice below that one, like this:

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Copyright (c) 2011 Adrian McEwen.  All right reserved.
Copyright (c) 2014 Aurélien Rodot.  All right reserved.

[rodot]

Thanks, I'll add the license headers in the next update on the beta branch later today