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Re: Copyright year displayed by command-line tools

From: Branko Čibej <brane_at_wandisco.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:32:52 +0100

On 20.03.2015 16:04, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> The ASF doesn't require copyright lines, AFAIK.
>
> To whit: httpd has *none* in the their repository.
> Here's a random file:
>
> http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/httpd/httpd/trunk/server/apreq_module_cgi.c?view=markup
>
> Copyright lines are legally meaningless.
> In fact, you are usually worse often having them, because if you get
> them wrong, it hurts you legally (if you mislead someone into
> infringement through a wrong notice, that's a defense for them) , but
> if you do nothing, it doesn't.

We're talking about two separate things here:

  * The contents of the NOTICE file; the ASF does, per current policy,
    require a copyright line there which includes the year.
  * The output of 'svn --version', 'svnadmin --version', etc, which has
    contained a copyright line for ages.

We don't have copyright lines in file headers.

I wouldn't mind removing the line from the version output; but as long
as we have it, it should IMO be the equivalent to what we (must) have in
NOTICE.

-- Brane

> (I'm assuming you aren't distributing copies of subversion from before
> 1988 here :P )

Thankfully, no. :)

-- Brane

> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 3:47 AM, Greg Stein <gstein_at_gmail.com
> <mailto:gstein_at_gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Let me expand on that a bit ... let's not hold any releases for
> this, but let's talk to Danny and other peeps at the ASF. I
> believe we can clear out a few lines. Pointing to subversion.a.o
> is nice. We should be able to scorch the other 3 lines.
>
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Greg Stein <gstein_at_gmail.com
> <mailto:gstein_at_gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> hehe... I think it is time to kill that off, with extreme
> prejudice :-D
>
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:35 AM, Branko Čibej
> <brane_at_wandisco.com <mailto:brane_at_wandisco.com>> wrote:
>
> On 20.03.2015 11:07, Greg Stein wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 4:28 AM, Branko Čibej
> <brane_at_wandisco.com <mailto:brane_at_wandisco.com>
> > <mailto:brane_at_wandisco.com <mailto:brane_at_wandisco.com>>> wrote:
> > >...
> >
> > IMO, we should either not display the year (which
> IIUC would
> > violate ASF policy), or we should display the
> correct year.
> > Anything else makes us look silly.
> >
> >
> > Hmm? Policy is at:
> > http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
> >
> > And that is what I see in a random sampling of our source.
> >
> >
> >
> > If I'm wrong about policy, then I propose we just
> change those
> > lines from:
> >
> > Copyright (C) 2014 The Apache Software Foundation.
> >
> >
> > Where are you seeing this?
>
> Output of 'svn --version', it's in
> subversion/libsvn_subr/version.c (and
> was in .../opt.c in 1.7).
>
> Been that way for decades.
>
> -- Brane
>
>
>
>
Received on 2015-03-20 16:33:26 CET

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