Re: [boost] Copyright-less licence references

Subject: Re: [boost] Copyright-less licence references
From: Gennadiy Rozental (rogeeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-09-15 17:05:15

Peter Dimov <lists <at> pdimov.com> writes:

> 
> Gennadiy Rozental wrote:
> 
> > Unless this changes, I am inclined to change disclaimer everywhere to 
> > "Copyright 2001 Boost.Test authors" and be done with that.
> 
> You can in principle ADD
> 
>     Copyright 2015 Boost.Test contributors
> 
> to each file and then update it to reflect the current year, so it 
becomes
> 
>     Copyright 2015-2017 Boost.Test contributors

Can you tell me why you yourself do not follow this advice? I do not see 
you updating copyright statements. Let's take any file with your copyright 
(do not take this personally - it is just an example). For example 
interlocked.hpp:

You have Copyright 2005 Peter Dimov.

This supposedly says that you started to work on this file in 2005 (which 
is indeed true) and you hold the copyright on content of this file ever 
since, right?

Few questions:

1. Why is it not "Copyright 2005-2015 Peter Dimov."
2. I see quite a lot of changes made since 2005. Does your disclaimer 
automatically make you hold a copyright to these lines since 2005 even 
though changes were made let's say 2012?
3. I see few other people made significant changes to this file. Why don't 
we have a Copyright disclaimers for all of them?

> 
> in 2017, but you can't remove the existing lines.

Why? 

1. Why I can't change my own copyright to this?
2. Why I can't change Raffi's copyright to this if he formally agrees to 
this?
3. Let's say someone had a copyright line introduced few years ago. And I 
removed lined which were authored by that person. Do I need to keep 
copyright? What is this Copyright to?

Gennadiy