Open Stack

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 1:05 PM, James E. Blair <jeblair at openstack.org>wrote:

> 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.
>

Yep, good point. I note that you don't need to use -present in the wiki
page at http://wiki.openstack.org/Documentation/Copyright.


>
> 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.
>
>
Okay, sounds right to me. Should I update the wiki page above to clarify?

Or, perhaps that wiki page needs to be somewhere else so that people know
it applies to code contributions as well as docs? Happy to move it as
needed.


> (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.
>
>
Yep, the wiki page above resulted from me talking to Lisa Miller to get
advice. Hopefully it's clear -- but do feel free to update as needed
especially from a code file header perspective.
Thanks,
Anne


> -Jim
>
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