Copyright Notices

Gary Steinert gary.steinert at gmail.com
Mon Feb 2 20:30:26 CET 2009


I have noticed many inconsistencies in the copyright and license notices at 
the top of each source file. I think that as a project, we should have a 
standardised header for each source file, partly so that people do not get 
confused by the licenses applied to our source code, and also simply for 
visual consistency.
I am willing to put in the time to change the headers, but I'm not entirely 
sure about the legality of changing the wording of some of the headers.
As far as I can tell, the header needs only to state the license used, as well 
as the copyright holders, but I may be wrong.
The header I propose for every file in the project is as follows:
(best viewed in single spaced font =P)

/***************************************************************************
*   This file is part of Amarok                                            *
*   Copyright (C) 2009 Gary Steinert <gary.steinert at gmail.com>                     
*
*                                                                          *
*   Amarok is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify         *
*   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by   *
*   the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or      *
*   (at your option) any later version.                                    *
*                                                                          *
*   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,        *
*   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of         *
*   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the          *
*   GNU General Public License for more details.                           *
*                                                                          *
*   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License      *
*   along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.  *
***************************************************************************/

Another point, as part of standardising the headers, should we start using the 
GPLv3? Additionally, some of the files use the Mozilla MPL but give the option 
of using solely the GPL. Should we remove the MPL or leave anyone to use the 
code the option of distributing under that license?

Some random question I know. But I'm no copyright expert. I'm hoping someone 
could shed some light on the best way forward.

Gary Steinert


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