OSGeo is governed by projects such as ours setting a precedent.
I like having headers that capture the initial author - since that has been
very helpful in sorting out any questions during our incubation and
subsequent external code audits.
I really cannot see song away with headers as they are being used.
On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 1:39 PM Ben Caradoc-Davies <b...@transient.nz> wrote:
> My understanding is that, under the Berne Convention, there is no
> requirement at all for any copyright notice, "Copyright", "(C)", "All
> Rights Reserved", or dates. The WTO requires compliance to TRIPS rules
> which thus apply these rules to practically every country in the world.
> Even the United States adopted the Berne Convention in 1989:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention
>
> In my view, and I am not a lawyer, copyright headers are copyright
> theatre without any legal effect, and serve only to permit authors to
> appear serious and knowledgeable about copyright to people who know
> little about it. They are based in obsolete pre-Berne practices.
> Remember that the original GPL boilerplate was written just as Berne
> came to the US and was not widely understood.
>
> I would like to see headers that are more useful to readers and more
> maintainable. I would love to see a static header like this:
>
> /*
> * GeoTools, The Open Source Java GIS Toolkit <http://geotools.org/>
> */
>
> All the copyright ownership and licensing information is here:
> http://geotools.org/about.html
>
> And we are done.
>
> So, what should we do? I think we are governed by OSGeo policy. Does
> OSGeo have a policy on headers? Has OSGeo obtained a legal opinion on
> this matter?
>
> Kind regards,
> Ben.
>
> On 23/04/16 01:01, Justin Deoliveira wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > Something I’ve been meaning to ask about is a clarification of why we
> have
> > to update copyright header dates to the current year for every file
> change.
> > As opposed to just having a static copyright header that signifies a
> > “copyright event” (like the change over to osgeo) and then stands for
> that
> > time forward.
> >
> > The reason I ask is because I think this policy has some negative things
> in
> > my opinion. For one it’s a pain for both contributors and reviewers to
> > enforce. I myself never remember as you probably well know and I would
> say
> > I am a pretty regular contributor. It also adds noise to patches and pull
> > requests, which also makes things harder to review than necessary.
> >
> >
> > Anyways, just curious as to the rationale behind this decision. My
> > apologies if this has been covered in previous email.
> >
> > -Justin
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
> --
> Ben Caradoc-Davies <b...@transient.nz>
> Director
> Transient Software Limited <http://transient.nz/>
> New Zealand
>
>
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--
Jody Garnett
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