Open Stack

On 05/15/2013 09:51 AM, David Ripton wrote:
> I'm not generally advocating removing copyright statements from source
> files.  If the author(s) put them in, then it's (at least) rude to take
> them out without permission, and getting permission from thousands of
> contributors would be a pain.
>
> But there's one particular case that drives me nuts.  We have source
> code files that contain _only_ a copyright statement, and no actual
> content to assert copyright over.  (I'm not talking about NOTICE files
> that exist to hold copyright statements; I'm talking about zero-byte
> __init__.py files that exist to mark a directory as a Python package.)
> You can't copyright a zero-byte file; there's no original creative
> content there.  And, because the copyright blurb makes the file's size
> nonzero, people waste time reading it to look for code.
>
> Anyone object to me emptying source files that contain no code, just
> copyright statements and boilerplate vim/emacs comments?

No objection, however can you write a hacking enforcer for it first? 
Having hacking be able to enforce on future commits really reduces 
mental load on review. Having policy that's not code enforced means we 
end up being somewhat inconsistent.

I also think this needs to be a -dev discussion, this list is a little 
small for finding the folks that might object.

	-Sean

-- 
Sean Dague
http://dague.net