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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/14/2014 12:29 PM, Colin McNamara
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:685FC9B3-A4A7-4CDB-B05C-798DB7DFCD94@2cups.com"
type="cite">
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I am not a lawyer, but the law as I understand it is -
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Copyright is held by the author and or the company that that
author is working for under a work for hire agreement. The code
that is contributed is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The original contributor does retain Copyright, which does
provide for legal protections for Corporate contributors, as
well as aligning into retained Patents on inventions implemented
through code contributed (and licensed) to OpenStack.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, that much is true. But this happens without a copyright
statement in the source file. There are a number of reasons for not
having copyright statements in the code:<br>
<br>
* If I edit a file and it says at the top that the file is copyright
BigCo, I am discouraged from editing that file, because of the
implication that I'm treading on someone else's toes. Files should
not have any indication that they are "owned" by any one person or
company. This actively discourages people jumping in a fixing stuff.<br>
<br>
* If N people contribute to a file, are we supposed to have N
copyright statements in the file? This doesn't scale over time.<br>
<br>
* Having author names in a file encourages people to contribute for
the wrong reasons.<br>
<br>
* Git keeps track of who contributed what changes. It's not
necessary to have explicit copyright statements.<br>
<br>
Copyright statements to individuals or companies in source files
seems very anti-community to me. Perhaps this is years of Apache
indoctrination speaking - we had this argument ten years ago at the
ASF, and author names in source files were strongly discouraged at
that time, due to all of the reasons listed above. I consider the
first one the most compelling. Anything that we can do to encourage
beginners to jump in and start working, we should. Having a
(implied) "this file is owned by BigCo Inc" statement at the top of
a file works actively against that.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:685FC9B3-A4A7-4CDB-B05C-798DB7DFCD94@2cups.com"
type="cite">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-family: Helvetica; font-weight: normal; ">Colin</p>
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<div>On Jan 14, 2014, at 10:15 AM, Rich Bowen <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:rbowen@redhat.com">rbowen@redhat.com</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">I'm looking at the source of the
Ceilometer docs, and several of the files have copyright
statements in the, attributing them to, eg, Rackspace or
DreamHost. What's the policy on this? Surely these are now
copyright OpenStack Foundation? Particularly as they accrue
commits from a variety of different people. Is it actually
desirable to anyone to keep these copyright statements in
these files?<br>
<br>
--Rich<br>
<br>
-- <br>
Rich Bowen - <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:rbowen@redhat.com">rbowen@redhat.com</a><br>
OpenStack Community Liaison<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://openstack.redhat.com/">http://openstack.redhat.com/</a><br>
<br>
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</blockquote>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Rich Bowen - <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rbowen@redhat.com">rbowen@redhat.com</a>
OpenStack Community Liaison
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://openstack.redhat.com/">http://openstack.redhat.com/</a></pre>
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