Changed GFZ name in copyright messages to English

The GFZ name in the copyright messages was given in German while the copyrights messages were written in English.

\approve @fd, @marius

assigned to @marius

When it comes to copyright, the official name used in the registration should be stated. Do we have a legal inscription of the GFZ organizational body in English language, too? From what I get from the Foundation Statutes the German name is used even in the English translation (starting page 10).

If we want to tell in a nice way, and English, about the GFZ, I would add a note into the README about something like - This Software is created and maintained by [Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences](https://gfz-potsdam.de/en).

The copyright notice on the GFZ English web pages are given with the English name. I suppose the legal department of GFZ has approved this.

I doubt the question has been explicitly brought up to them. I also don't think it is a big problem. Here I prefer to be correct and not move to a more gray area. At least not without having formal input from a lawyer. Why should we?

I noticed that every English text I found on the GFZ website uses the English name for the copyright notice. If this is not convincing, then I suggest to contact the legal department to receive guidance on how to formulate the copyright notice correctly. I find using the non-English names confusing as it would render copyright notices of institutions in e.g. China or Japan unreadable due to their different scripts.

There is a significant difference of the copyright statement on the website and in code, the first one is just a kind of a reminder that GFZ has all copyrights. With or without it, GFZ has them. There is no actual legal value in it, and it doesn't matter if one uses a translated or shortened name.

On the other side, a license is a formal agreement or contract and has legal effects, to my knowledge a properly registered name is a strong requirement for doing a contract. I'm not sure, but I assume from the Statutes the legal name of GFZ only exists in German. I might be wrong. A clarification from the legal department would be helpful, on whether contracts with solely the English name are common and ok to do.

approved this merge request

assigned to @fd and unassigned @marius

assigned to @ds and unassigned @fd

Given that the legal team has not proven helpful for other questions, I will not further investigate this and close the MR.

closed

unassigned @ds