On Fri, 28 Dec 2001 00:38, robert burrell donkin wrote:
> i've been making changes to some commons sub projects and came across some
> source files with (what i call) the short form of the license eg.
>
>   * Copyright (C) The Apache Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
>   *
>   * This software is published under the terms of the Apache Software
> License
>   * version 1.1, a copy of which has been included with this distribution
> in * the LICENSE file.
>
> rather than including the complete license text in every source file.
>
> i remember a big flame war about license style and i don't want to
> re-ignite it but am i right in thinking that for legal reasons we need to
> include the complete license text in every source file (rather than just
> the short form)?

Not according to Brian Behlendorf (sp?) last time I heard him say anything 
about this. I think it should actually be in the archive of this list?

> (i'm not going to change things if it's just a matter of house style, but
> if it's a legal requirement then it's something that should be fixed.)

It is not a legal requirement or anything like that. Theres a fair bit of 
nonsense about it going on - I even heard someone say it was "illegal" which 
made me chuckle. The main issues is one of policy and enforcability (is this 
a word?). 

However given it is policy that all projects conform to Suns development/code 
standards (yet less than 50% did last time I checked) you can ignore that for 
a bit. 

Whether it is enforcable enough seems to be debateable but everyone I have 
spoken to who actually knows anything about western legal systems (american 
and australian being the only two I care about at this stage) say there is no 
issue with either form.

Be careful which people you choose to listen to.

-- 
Cheers,

Pete

------------------------------------------------------
 Mark Twain: "In the real world, the right thing never
happens in the right place at the right time. It is 
the task of journalists and historians to rectify 
this error."
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