[openstack-dev] Copyright headers in source files

Russell Bryant rbryant at redhat.com
Fri May 17 14:23:08 UTC 2013


On 05/17/2013 10:07 AM, Brian Lamar wrote:
> I'm genuinely curious why your first preference is for complete copyright headers after it's been determined they're not needed to preserve copyright. Can you expound on that? Perhaps I'm misinterpreting markwash's statements.

Because it gives some people warm fuzzies, and there's some value in
that.  The chance for recognition in public helps drive open source
contributions.  It also seems to be the norm.  It's done all over the
place, so I'm just used to it.

Admittedly that view seems outdated, though.  Since git maintains
history of commit authors, the headers seem to have more value for a
project using a a system like svn with only a few committers and no
tracking of who wrote the code other than what you write in the commit
message and leave in copyright headers.

Anyway, I'm not trying to argue for keeping them.  If everyone wants to
kill them, that is completely ok with me.

-- 
Russell Bryant



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