Re: [boost] Copyright-less licence references

Subject: Re: [boost] Copyright-less licence references
From: Jonathan Wakely (jwakely.boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-09-15 07:19:57

On 15 September 2015 at 06:45, Gennadiy Rozental wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I suggest we should drop "Copyright Joe Coder 20xx" from all our files. My
> reasons:
>
> * git/svn history provides much better copyright attribution. Each developer
> has a copyright on lines authored. As it is these copyright disclaimers are
> very frequently wrong.

Most users download a release archive. To use the code they need to
know it is appropriately licensed.

> * I am never clear what this line really mean. Copyright Joe Coder 2010 -
> does this mean Joe has copyright up to 2010, starting 2010 or only in 2010?
> Should one keep updating these disclaimers every January?

As already suggested, your confusion is not a good reason to remove
important information.

> * For libraries which are maintained by multiple developers and/or which
> were moved from one maintainer to another maintainer - these disclaimers
> either wrong or pain to maintain.
>
> * these are just a clutter with no real value
>
> IMO we should just keep licence reference and that's it:
>
> //  Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
> //  (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at
> //  http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)

Well you'd need to change the license, since it requires copyright
notices to be present in the source code!

There's a good reason for that. The license is granted by the
copyright holders. If you don't know who that is, you don't know who
is granting the licence, and you don't know if you can use it under
those terms.