On 09/09/13 19:53, Russel Winder wrote:
Sadly, although it would be nice to have a file that says it applies
to all files and so be very DRY, this will not work in UK and USA law,
possibly also other jurisdictions. The licence statement has to be in
each and every individual file since in UK and USA law each file is
deemed a separate work. If you check FSF and other FOSS licence places
they will set this out as the process because of this problem. Some
IDEs even have plugins to sort this out for you!
This.
There have been many, many cases of open source projects with valid
LICENSE files that turn out to have a couple of files from somewhere
else that are not appropriately licensed. I don't know if anyone
remembers the mplayer saga on debian-legal, for example.
By putting a (c) statement and license summary in every file you are
removing the risk from someone who uses your code that they are going to
end up in a difficult position later. Google are being reasonable in
protecting themselves here.
Although getting licensing right is amazingly dull, it is relatively
easy if you use a good license just follow the instructions provided
with it.
FWIW, personally I recommend the Apache License 2.0 as the best license
available right now (if you don't care about copylefting), and it has
very clear instructions in the appendix:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
That notice should be included in every file, because each is a
potentially independent work.
Cheers,
Doug.
--
Telephone: +44 1904 567330, Mobile: +44 7879 423002
Switchboard: +44 1904 567349, Fax: +44 20 79006980
Post: Tower House, Fishergate, York, YO10 4UA, UK
Registered in England. Company No 5171172. VAT GB843570325.
Registered Address: Tower House, Fishergate, York, YO10 4UA
_______________________________________________
python-uk mailing list
python-uk@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk
