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Re: Copyright year displayed by command-line tools

From: Daniel Berlin <dberlin_at_dberlin.org>
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 08:04:29 -0700

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.

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

On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 3:47 AM, Greg Stein <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> 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> 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>> 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 2015-03-23 07:11:52 CET

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