Open Stack

Anne Gentle <anne at openstack.org> writes:

> As you can probably see from the -1s on the patchsets I submitted, people
> will yell. :) I'm certain that OpenStack LLC no longer exists, and the
> transfer occurred to the OpenStack Foundation, so that one is "correct" as
> is the year is now 2013. However I am trying to avoid yearly copyright
> updates by using -present to avoid annual maintenance. We'll see if the
> lawyers will agree to that.

Here's some good advice on how to add a copyright header:

  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html

I believe the right thing to do is to update the years and copyright
holders each time the file is updated (but not otherwise).  So we
shouldn't need 'yearly copyright updates' -- we would only update the
copyright notice on a file if it's (substantially) changed.  I also
don't think "-present" is the right thing to do.  It's just factually
not true.  If you open a file that hasn't been changed in years, the
copyright held on that file was not issued in the present, it's from
several years ago.

Over time, we should end up with copyright notices that look like:

# Copyright 2011 OpenStack, LLC.
# Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
# Copyright 2012 Red Hat, Inc.
# Copyright 2013-2015 MicroGoog, Inc.
...etc...

Based on advice from the lawyers, we should perhaps change the initial
"OpenStack, LLC" to "OpenStack Foundation" to reflect the change in
ownership of the initial copyright.  But generally, new code should not
be attributed to the foundation (nor should the year of the initial
copyright line be updated) unless there has been an explicit assignment
to the foundation, or a foundation employee authored the code.

(This information is my understanding from having spent some time in the
software copyright trenches; I'm not relaying foundation legal advice or
anything.)  Please keep us (or at least me if this bores everyone else)
updated on what you hear.

-Jim