Open Stack

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 8:48 AM, Clint Byrum <clint at fewbar.com> wrote:

>
> I understand that they get out of date.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.
>

There was also talk of adding a "static" breadcrumb that says something to
the effect of "this work is copyrighted by somebody, you should go [HERE]
if you need to figure out whom". Would that be sufficient? I'm just worried
that an inaccurate notice is worse than one that is not particularly
helpful.


>
> > 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 agree. My main interest is that contributors and reviewers stop having to
think about copyright notices. I know it won't make me popular to say so,
but this talk of consistency just seems like hot air at best, or a
deliberately false dilemma at worst. The only argument in favor of
consistency I've heard is that some copyright holders don't want to back
out unilaterally. Well, that doesn't bother me. They can keep their
existing notices, or only grant permission to remove when they're the last
ones left.
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