There are two schools of thought Justin. I had this discussion in detail on
the geowebache-devel
<https://sourceforge.net/p/geowebcache/mailman/message/34556080/> with Arne
Kepp (and did some research at that time which was unsatisfying to both of
us - and probably scared away a contributor). See #355
<https://github.com/GeoWebCache/geowebcache/pull/355> for epic heated
discussion - during which I learned two things:
- there is a difference of between publication vs the contents of the file
changing
- when transferring ownership from OpenPlans --> OSGeo we could of done a
search and replace (removing reference to OpenPlans)
As you say some projects write down the (c) of the initial file
contribution and call it a day ... reasoning being that the length of a
copyright is now 75+ years and by that time we will have diamond lattice
grid chips running a combination of javascript wrappers around q-bit
cores....
The headers are supposed to be maintained each year the content changes in
a substantial way (the actual code stuff, not javadocs and comments).
Because we change our files often we usually get away with a range - "(C)
2003-2016". For files that change less often we could have gaps "(C) 2003,
2005, 2006-2009, 2016"
I understand that we could, as a PMC, decide to just go with initial file
creation date (which is admittedly often forms the bulk of the work).
However subsequent contributions can be very important, as someone who's
work has been rewritten on occasion can attest. We can make the argument
that we should be able to recover this information from github if needed,
and I guess we would need to if it ever comes up.
If the PMC wants to make this decision I would be -0, I understand that it
would assist with github pull requests, but I feel we would do so by
cutting a corner.
--
Jody Garnett
On 22 April 2016 at 06:01, Justin Deoliveira <jdeol...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Something I’ve been meaning to ask about is a clarification of why we have
> to update copyright header dates to the current year for every file change.
> As opposed to just having a static copyright header that signifies a
> “copyright event” (like the change over to osgeo) and then stands for that
> time forward.
>
> The reason I ask is because I think this policy has some negative things
> in my opinion. For one it’s a pain for both contributors and reviewers to
> enforce. I myself never remember as you probably well know and I would say
> I am a pretty regular contributor. It also adds noise to patches and pull
> requests, which also makes things harder to review than necessary.
>
>
> Anyways, just curious as to the rationale behind this decision. My
> apologies if this has been covered in previous email.
>
> -Justin
>
>
>
>
>
>
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