Copyright information in headers

[Dimiter Naydenov]

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As we're on copyright headers topic, is there a clear policy what
headers to use for contributed code, like the one Joyent did or
CloudSigma ?

Should it be:

// Copyright 2014 Canonical Ltd.
// Copyright 2014 CONTRIBUTOR-XYZ..
// Licensed under the AGPLv3, see LICENCE file for details.

Or:

// Copyright 2014 CONTRIBUTOR-XYZ..
// Licensed under the AGPLv3, see LICENCE file for details.

Or even:

// Copyright 2014 Canonical Ltd.
// Licensed under the AGPLv3, see LICENCE file for details.

That to me seems more important than should we update the year when we
change the file.

On  4.09.2014 03:04, Andrew Wilkins wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 5:50 AM, Ian Booth <ian.booth at canonical.com 
> <mailto:ian.booth at canonical.com>> wrote:
> 
> Hi folks
> 
> The question recently came up in reviews as to whether we should
> be updating the date in the copyright statement in the file header
> when we make a change to the code in that file. I sought
> clarification from Robie Basak, who previously had provided input
> on licensing issues and compliance for getting Juju included in 
> trusty. Below is what he said.
> 
> TL;DR; It doesn't really matter, we just need to agree on a policy.
> It is suggested though that we do update the date when we make a
> change. Agree?
> 
> <snip>
>> 
>> What's our policy for dates in copyright headers?
>> 
>> // Copyright 2012, 2013 Canonical Ltd. // Licensed under the
>> AGPLv3, see LICENCE file for details.
> 
> From the point of view of acceptability for Ubuntu, it doesn't 
> particularly matter, and I don't believe it'll cause any issue for
> us whatever you do here. I'll certainly be happy to upload whether
> or not you update the date.
> 
> I'll try to explain my perspective on this, but I'm not entirely 
> confident that there isn't something I'm missing for the broader 
> picture, so note that I Am Not A Lawyer, etc.
> 
>> For the above, do we need to add 2014 if we modify the file this
>> year? Or is the date just meant to be the year the file was first
>> published?
> 
> I think it's meant to be the sum of all the copyright claims on
> the file. So if you add some new code, you have a copyright claim
> on the new code in the newer year in which you made it.
> 
> AIUI, the purpose of the date is that since copyright expires 
> (theoretically, anyway), updating the date updates the copyright
> claim, which would give us more control in the (eventual) event
> that copyright expires.
> 
> In practice, IMHO this is never going to matter since nobody is
> going to care about the copyright on a piece of software that is
> that old anyway. But I suppose laws could change, so the right
> thing to do would be to add a new year whenever you make a change
> in a new year on a per-file file basis. BTW, it's common to fold
> "2012, 2013, 2014" to just "2012-2014".
> 
> But I don't particularly care for upload purposes.
> 
> 
> Depending on the country, copyright notices require the first year
> of publication. I'm not aware of any that *require* the full range,
> but in some cases it is recommended to have it on ongoing works as
> a claim of authorship. As Gustavo says, we have this in revision
> control. We work in the open. Let's not get distracted with
> unnecessary work.
> 
> 


- -- 
Dimiter Naydenov <dimiter.naydenov at canonical.com>
juju-core team
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