Hi, On 5 July, 20:08, Michiel <[email protected]> wrote: > Here's something that's confused me for a little while. Perhaps > someone in this group can shed some light? It's a bit off topic, I > guess, but I'm not sure where else to ask. > > From several sources I've gathered that it's not healthy for an open > source project to have authors' names in the source code. It would > promote unwanted territorialism. Make potential contributors hesitant > to touch the code. Also, it's never clear when you've earned the right > to have your name up there. From Producing Open Source Software, by > Karl Fogel: > > "In order to combat incipient territorialism, or even the appearance > of it, many projects have taken the step of banning the inclusion of > author names or designated maintainer names in source files. I > wholeheartedly agree with this practice: we follow it in the > Subversion project, and it is more or less official policy at the > Apache Software Foundation." >
you can also watch this great video from Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick "What's In It for Me? Benefits from Open Sourcing Code" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtYJoatnHb8 where they talk about this same issue, and even give an example ;) > In principle I agree. However, to apply the GNU GPL license to the > code, it would appear a copyright notice in each file is mandatory. > > I quote fromhttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html: > > "Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two > elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such > as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying > permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of > the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL)." > > Karl Fogel agrees. From his book: > > "In general, the notice you put in each source file does not have to > look exactly like the one above, as long as it starts with the same > notice of copyright holder and date, states the name of the license, > and makes it clear where to view the full license." > > So... how does this work? Is there a way to have the cake and eat it > too? contributor(s)/author(s) and owner(s) are 2 different thing “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones” is TJ applying his copyright on the source code so he can attribute a licence to it and extend rights to people who would want to use/copy/etc. the code. There is no other way to do that, you can only apply a copyright on something you own. " Contributor(s): - Terry Jones <[email protected]> " is TJ mentioning that he contributed to this file. this is what K. Fogel talk about in your first quote, and this can only be decided by the owner(s) of the source code. some projects will ban it, some other projects will have no problem with that, depends on the owners, the scale/size of the project, the number of commiters etc. The book of Fogel is pretty good but I would take everything as rules, more as advices. You know, try it for yourself, see what works, what don't, and form your own opinion ;). cheers, zwetan --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hosting at Google Code" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-code-hosting?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
