Andrey Semashev
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.
And arbitrary number I put in a source file body is? I'll put 1900 there and will claim that bubble sort implemented in my file is authored by me. How about that?
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.
That would require to comment on pretty much each line of code, claiming the copyright.
* 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).
And? What do I get copyright to (Assuming one does not have access to VCS)?