On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 02:58:27PM -0500, Mark Brown wrote:
Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com> wrote on 05/14/2013 02:50:31 PM:
On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 01:53:19PM -0500, Mark Brown wrote:
In several cases, the provenance of individual files was being investigated, and per-file copyright statements were an important part of that.
In the case of OpenStack, like many other modern projects, the most accurate file provenance record would seem to be the git commit history. That does not necessarily tell you anything conclusive about copyright ownership, but it is a better record to go by than examining copyright notices in source files (which, as noted, could well be, or become, inaccurate).
Ah, but when files are taken from this project and used in another (non-Stack) work, they become out-of-context from your git.
Yes, and this is the strongest argument for having *some* kind of legal notice in each file (though I don't consider it *too* strong). It may depend on what circumstance you are concerned about when a file gets used out of context. But this concern can be addressed without inclusion of per-file copyright notices (Aaron Williamson gives some suggestions in the article I referenced upthread), and the larger point is that the copyright notices are likely to become inaccurate anyway.
IANAL, but I heartily suggest that this topic be brought up at the Foundation level, before we put anything into effect at the Project level.
This honestly seems way too trivial to be a Foundation-level issue (I assume by that you mean something that requires a Board decision?). (Again, for clarification, I am not taking a particular stance on the issue being discussed here.)
Mostly, I wanted to suggest that a lawyer needs to advise us on this. The Foundation is our go-to place for legal help, is it not?
That is a very interesting question, as phrased, but I'd say the answer is no. - RF