Policy for applying copyright notices

[Anthony Liguori]

On 10/25/2011 02:17 PM, Livnat Peer wrote:
> On 10/25/2011 08:21 PM, Karsten Wade wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 10:26:11AM +0200, Doron Fediuck wrote:
>>>
>>> I was following the Apache sample you gave. If ovirt.org is not a legal entity
>>> for intellectual property matters, and contributer does not belong to a company
>>> we'll get to a state which every file in the project will be copyrighted to
>>> a different person. This is too chaotic.
>>
>> I'm confused about what the real issue is here.
>>
>> I haven't honestly studied a lot of FOSS source files, just when I
>> needed to. The copyright and license header is there in a comment
>> field, I skip by, and start hunting for whatever I need. Even when the
>> copyright is several lines long.
>>
>> Having these details in the files and in the git record is important
>> for when we need to contact copyright holders for any reason.
>>
>> The most important thing AIUI is that the files are _licensed_
>> properly. As long as the files are ASL, we can use them in the
>> project, regardless of the copyright holder.
>>
>
> I started the discussion about credits to file's author and it took a
> little turn, assuming no legal issue, my original request was -
>
> I rather not have the author name on the file.
> The main reason for that is that file changes over time and after a
> while it has little to do with the original version. There are many
> contributors to the changes and by having one name on the file we "hide"
> the contribution of other developers.

I think what you're hearing is that copyright text tends to be both something 
that individuals have strong personal feelings about and something that 
corporate legal departments have strong feelings about.

It's probably best to avoid specific policies other than requiring a valid 
copyright statement and a valid statement of licensing.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori