dovecot - Jun 2007 - Copyright notices in code

I thought about committing this change to all .c files:

Removed all Copyright Timo Sirainen comments. They weren't always
correct and the year numbers were rarely updated when something was
changed. Copyright is owned by the creator by default in practically all
countries, there's no need to advertise it everywhere. 

Can anyone think of reasons why this wouldn't be a good idea?

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Timo Sirainen wrote:
> I thought about committing this change to all .c files:
>
> Removed all Copyright Timo Sirainen comments. They weren't always
> correct and the year numbers were rarely updated when something was
> changed. Copyright is owned by the creator by default in practically all
> countries, there's no need to advertise it everywhere. 
>
> Can anyone think of reasons why this wouldn't be a good idea?
>
>   
It is always a good idea to spell out the copyright anyway. Besides, you 
can't gaurantee that no one will use one file somewhere else, before 
long the question of ownership and license becomes an issue if these 
aren't spelled out in each file.

Just my over careful 2 cents.

Trever

I think the authors' names are sufficient. 


Andrew Flannery

-----Original Message-----
From: dovecot-bounces at dovecot.org [mailto:dovecot-bounces at dovecot.org]
On Behalf Of Timo Sirainen
Sent: 29 June 2007 10:15
To: dovecot at dovecot.org
Subject: [Dovecot] Copyright notices in code

I thought about committing this change to all .c files:

Removed all Copyright Timo Sirainen comments. They weren't always
correct and the year numbers were rarely updated when something was
changed. Copyright is owned by the creator by default in practically all
countries, there's no need to advertise it everywhere. 

Can anyone think of reasons why this wouldn't be a good idea?

On Fri, Jun 29, 2007 at 05:14:39PM +0300, Timo Sirainen
wrote:
> I thought about committing this change to all .c files:
> 
> Removed all Copyright Timo Sirainen comments. They weren't always
> correct and the year numbers were rarely updated when something was
> changed. Copyright is owned by the creator by default in practically all
> countries, there's no need to advertise it everywhere. 
> 
> Can anyone think of reasons why this wouldn't be a good idea?
> 
The FSF highly recommends putting the whole lot of it in each
file. It doesn't hurt and is the safest bet.

There are templates to use, that look like

<what this code does (one line)>

<copyright/dates/author (one to few lines)>

<license text (three paragraphs)>
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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On 6/30/07, Axel Thimm <Axel.Thimm at atrpms.net>
wrote:
>
> The FSF highly recommends putting the whole lot of it in each
> file. It doesn't hurt and is the safest bet.
>
> There are templates to use, that look like
>
  Easy to do with a lot of rc systems to push and maintain the proper
header notice, that you mention, into the file via a hook as well as
maintain a list of authors. Thus keeping the project's legal postings
out of the hands of developers and ever checkout free and clear.

  I believe one of the svn tools handles authors so much as to deal
with merges and splits of code. So when a writemail.c is split into
writembox.c and writemaildir.c the proper authors are attributed. Sort
of sexy.

---
Gabriel Millerd