Re: Do we need doxygen file header?

Subject: Re: Do we need doxygen file header?
From: Mateusz Loskot (mateusz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-09-27 21:45:33

On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 at 22:54, Stefan Seefeld <stefan_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On 2018-09-27 04:40 PM, Mateusz Loskot wrote:
>
> >>   Can you leave the \brief, \author, \data?
> > \author is or moves to the copyright
>
> Unless it's a project created by a single developer, I don't think
> "author" is meaningful.
> Many people will touch a file over its lifetime
> (details of which can be extracted from the git log).

https://www.boost.org/users/license.html
"Copyright is only claimed for changes meeting a certain threshold of
originality.
Therefore, the copyright message only covers expressions of creativity.
It is up to authors of changes to add themselves to the copyright
message if they so decide. "

However, there are source code licensing experts even argue the copyright notice
as completely pointless to determine creation provenance and claim authorship.
Nowadays, it's more to fullfil some element of proud or ego :-)

https://opensource.com/law/14/2/copyright-statements-source-files
"Git keeps track of who contributed what changes.
It's not necessary to have explicit copyright statements.
(...) There are better ways to give credit, and our preference is to use those
(...) Author tags also tend to get out of date."

> To document actual authorship in a more "high-level" way, we may want to create a separate
> "authors.md" file containing a listing of all the people who contributed to the project as a whole.

For now, I'd stick to Boost copyright notice maintenance guidelines -
ie. add yourself to copyright if you consider your changes to reach
creativity threshold.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net