Policy for applying copyright notices

[Anthony Liguori]

On 10/23/2011 01:23 PM, Doron Fediuck wrote:
> On Sunday 23 October 2011 20:01:33 Livnat Peer wrote:
>> On 10/23/2011 07:31 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>>> On 10/23/2011 08:37 AM, Carl Trieloff wrote:
>>>> On 10/22/2011 01:18 PM, Livnat Peer wrote:
>>>>> I personally rather dropping the [name of copyright owner] I believe
>>>>> that's why we have history in the source control.
>>>>
>>>> That is also fine.
>>>>
>>>> Note that if a file is brought to the project it is considered bad form
>>>> to strip the copyright notice, so over time we will get a collection of
>>>> files with notices and without over time if code is re-used from other
>>>> OSS projects.
>>>
>>> Are we talking about dropping the copyright line or an authors line?
>>> For instance:
>>>
>>> * Copyright International Business Machines, 2011
>>> *  Authors:
>>> *   Anthony Liguori<aliguori at us.ibm.com>
>>>
>>> Having a person's name in the file is useful in terms of asking
>>> questions.  Yes, git exists but not everything deals with git trees.
>>>
>>> If we're talking about stripping the Copyright line, that's not going to
>>> be allowed some corporate legal departments.  People copy files between
>>> projects so preserving the copyright notice is pretty important.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Anthony Liguori
>>>
>>
>> I was referring to the author.
>> One person is adding the file and many others are changing it. Many
>> times (after a while) the file has little to do with the original file
>> that was added.
>>
>> So for questions about the file you usually need to deal with the info
>> from the source control.
>>
>> Livnat
>>
> WRT to omitting the person name (from past experience...),
> After a year or so people change positions / work places, and this
> becomes simply an old memory, with the relevant person not longer
> available to answer questions, so this is missing the point.

As long as we're just talking about the Authors section, I guess it doesn't 
matter that much.  It really only matters for corporate contributors.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori