FileCopyrightText...

[David Jarvie]

On 29 January 2024 12:31:44 GMT, Harald Sitter <sitter at kde.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 10:49 AM Carl Schwan <carl at carlschwan.eu> wrote:
> >
> > On Monday, January 29, 2024 10:43:04 AM CET Harald Sitter wrote:
> > > do we really need it?
> > >
> > > systemd for example only has a spdx license header, resulting in much
> > > tidier file headers.
> > >
> > > I entirely fail to understand why we need to slap a FileCopyrightText
> > > on files. The copyright surely applies whether or not I put the
> > > FileCopyrightText there. The list is also just about always
> > > incomplete, further calling its use into question. Not to mention that
> > > it is annoying book keeping of information that is already available
> > > in git.
> > >
> > > Can someone shed some light on this?
> >
> > The reuse FAQ has an entry about why only keeping the copyright information in
> > git is a bad idea: https://reuse.software/faq/#vcs-copyright
> 
> Yes, that makes no sense to me. Whether I put my copyright stamp on a
> file or not has no impact on whether I actually have copyright. That
> is to say when someone doesn't add their stamp they would still be a
> copyright holder. Which means that unless everyone who ever touched a
> file puts their stamp on it, which is something we didn't and don't
> enforce, the list is inherently incomplete and by extension useless
> ... So, authorship data is in fact more relevant here because you get
> all would-be copyright holders, not just the ones that bothered to put
> their stamp on the file. No? ... Obviously the authors list may still
> be incomplete but I'm willing to put money on the fact that 9/10 it is
> more complete than whatever the license headers proclaim to be the
> case.

Although copyright only applies to non-trivial changes, so the actual set of copyright holders is likely to lie somewhere between the authors list in the headers and the full list provided from git commits.

--
David Jarvie
KAlarm author, KDE developer