Stefano suggested that I bring this to the legal-discuss list. I
know that this has been discussed in the past, so I don't anticipate
a great shift in sentiment, but it seemed worth discussing.
My full thoughts are on my blog -
http://drbacchus.com/copyright-statements-in-source-files
- and I know some of you have seen this discussed on the docs
mailing list, or seen it on planet.openstack
Anyways, it has been my experience in Open Source communities that
having a copyright statement at the top of a source file can be very
off-putting to people who want to contribute to that file, due to
the perception that it is "owned" by someone in particular.
The statement is not necessary: copyright law ensures that
contributors have copyright on the content that they author, and git
keeps a permanent record of who contributed what. Some folks have
claimed (the last time this came up on this list) that the statement
was necessary, and this is not the case.
It's also unscalable - think in terms of 10 years from now when
every file potentially lists hundreds of copyright holders - or
perhaps only those who saw fit to add their name to the growing
list. What would this contribute?
And if people are contributing solely for recognition - which seems
at least part of the motivation for a copyright statement, perhaps
1) they're missing the point of Open Source and 2) we should provide
a more public means of thanking the enormous list of contributors,
rather than having it scattered across thousands of files that
relatively few people will ever see.
--
Rich Bowen - rbowen@redhat.com
OpenStack Community Liaison
http://openstack.redhat.com/