On Wed Jan 28, 2026 at 11:45 AM CET, Jan Beulich wrote: > On 28.01.2026 10:09, Alejandro Vallejo wrote: >> The refinement also applies to the second bullet point, so I can add it as a >> separate paragraph stating existing notices are to never be modified and only >> removed with the express consent of the current holder(s). > > That's interesting, as it may be getting increasingly difficult in practice. > Often you can't get hold of the holder(s), to the degree that - as we're all > growing older - at some point they may not be there at all anymore. Yet if > not having such notices is going to be a goal of the project, retaining some > indefinitely can't be the intention either. > >> Do you have a take for/against moving all existing notices to a separate >> NOTICES >> file (a-la Apache). The existing file for them (in httpd) looks like this, so >> they took the liberty to rewording the banners to be more digestible in >> single >> file inclusion. >> >> Apache HTTP Server >> Copyright 2026 The Apache Software Foundation. >> >> This product includes software developed at >> The Apache Software Foundation (https://www.apache.org/). >> >> Portions of this software were developed at the National Center >> for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of >> Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. >> >> This software contains code derived from the RSA Data Security >> Inc. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm, including various >> modifications by Spyglass Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, and >> Bell Communications Research, Inc (Bellcore). >> >> This software contains code derived from the PCRE library pcreposix.c >> source code, written by Philip Hazel, Copyright 1997-2004 >> by the University of Cambridge, England. >> >> It'd blur the scope of existing holders, but code moves and so do their >> contributions. Keeping a banner on a file after a refactor is just >> misattribution. >> >> ------------------ >> >> In short. There's 1 question in 2 forms I'd like to have an answer to from a >> core maintainers. >> >> Would you be willing to ack a change along these lines? >> 1. to a Copyright Notice policy within CODING_STYLE. > > Likely, once we've agreed on suitable wording. > >> 2. to the relegation of existing notices to a NOTICES file in the style of >> Apache. Apache in particular mandates the file not be touched unless >> absolutely required for legal reasons. > > Very unlikely. While likely I wouldn't veto it, I don't like such moving > around > of things. If we want to get them out of the source files, they should be > dropped altogether.
Ack to both, thanks for the input! Cheers, Alejandro
