Philippe Cloutier created MNG-7734: -------------------------------------- Summary: Default configuration file (settings.xml) contains copyright notice Key: MNG-7734 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MNG-7734 Project: Maven Issue Type: Wish Components: Settings Affects Versions: 3.9.0 Reporter: Philippe Cloutier
[The default contents of Maven's settings.xml configuration file|https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf?p=maven.git;a=blob_plain;f=apache-maven/src/assembly/maven/conf/settings.xml;hb=HEAD] start with the following comment: {code:xml} <!-- Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. --> {code} As a result, my organization has settings.xml files which start with that copyright notice. This is confusing and distracting, making an already long file even longer. A casual look makes it seem as if that file is unmodified source, while it is in fact a configuration file. It is true that the file contains sizable test comments which must be subject copyright, so the notice is correct and has some value. However, its length and prominence (before even the file's description) increases the risk of confusion. Since copyright notices are not necessary to copyright protection, since the Apache License is permissive and since the value of copyrights on that file are limited, I recommend to remove that notice from settings.xml. -- This message was sent by Atlassian Jira (v8.20.10#820010)