[openstack-dev] Copyright headers in source files

Clint Byrum clint at fewbar.com
Fri May 17 15:48:38 UTC 2013


Excerpts from Russell Bryant's message of 2013-05-17 07:23:08 -0700:
> 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 Admittedly that view seems outdated, though.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.
> 

Git does not follow the code through to tarballs and onto peoples'
systems.  Also git does not express copyright assignment. Much of the code
I write is work for hire for HP Cloud and thus they own the copyrights. To
look at git and determine that, one would have to know the dates of my
employment. This creates an ambiguity that a copyright notice does not.

I understand that they get out of date. HP could sell the copyrights
to another company, and even though my code says "Copyright Hewlett
Packard Development Corporation" now it belongs to "Fictional Future
Corporation". However, this still provides a bread crumb for anyone
auditing the code to follow to HP, who can then make it clear they do
not own the rights and that they have transferred to FFC.

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

I think its fine to have them, or to not. I don't think it is a world
ending thing to have inaccurate and inconsistent copyright headers. We
will likely not have them anymore, but now we will just have inaccurate
and inconsistent AUTHORS files and git logs.

I do think they are useful in a tiny fraction of cases where the origin of
modified code is in dispute, especially when that code has been separated
from its git/AUTHORS/LICENSE. However, if the cost of maintaining and/or
reviewing them is deemed high, then it is probably worth it to just drop
them and make some kind of statement about this risk.



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