On 8/6/07, Don Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > *sigh* Sometimes the ASF overhead can be such a pain... The headers > are fine when you use an IDE, but when you use vi, it means scrolling > down the 50 or whatever lines every time, which is so annoying.
I agree with Don. Injecting all the licensing falderah into example applications accomplishes no clear purpose. It's just licensing OCD. As a matter of law, the license in the root of the distribution covers everything. We reiterate headers in the source files just in case they are separated from the distribution. In source code, when patent issues and other concerns might be involved, embedding the copyright and license might conceivably make a difference, somewhere, sometime. (Though, I expect the scenarios remain far fetched.) In the case example applications and build files, I don't see why licensing OCD would apply. If we include the headers, then we are compelling anyone who cribs from the examples to include the header too. I don't believe that is what we intend. The underlying problem is that under US copyright law there is no longer any clear way to put material into the public domain. Even if you say "I hereby donate this material to the public domain", technically, you still have a copyright claim (and a copyright liability). We assert our copyright so that we can assert a license so that we can disclaim liability and inject other terms regarding patents and such. As mentioned, asserting that claim once in the root of the distribution is all we *need* to do. Injecting the headers into source files is just our way of saying that we take licensing seriously, and thereby reassure existing and potential volunteers that they can trust us with their own donations and grants. Even so, creating licensed material is not our mission. Our mission is to foster collaboration. In the case of example application, I don't see that licensing OCD reinforces our core goal. It only makes it harder for people in our community to utilize the examples, and harder for the volunteers to maintain the example. It hinders without helping. -Ted. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
