On 15.09.2015 08:45, Gennadiy Rozental wrote:
Hi,
I suggest we should drop "Copyright Joe Coder 20xx" from all our files. My reasons:
* git/svn history provides much better copyright attribution. Each developer has a copyright on lines authored. As it is these copyright disclaimers are very frequently wrong.
There is no VCS history in the distributed packages. Also, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure VCS history counts as a legal indication of authorship. I'll add that personally I feel that history is something that can be lost relatively painlessly (e.g. due to transition to a different VCS or github being destroyed or whatever other reason). All relevant information should still be available in the source code.
* I am never clear what this line really mean. Copyright Joe Coder 2010 - does this mean Joe has copyright up to 2010, starting 2010 or only in 2010? Should one keep updating these disclaimers every January?
Yeah, that is confusing to me as well.
* For libraries which are maintained by multiple developers and/or which were moved from one maintainer to another maintainer - these disclaimers either wrong or pain to maintain.
I see no problem with that. Don't remove anyone from the copyright notice, add yourself only when your contribution is large enout (at your best judgement).