On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 9:19 PM, Platonides <[email protected]> wrote:

> Regarding "keeping the big header is important", I don't think anyone
> barely into CS  on this century can not know what the GPL is (and not
> figure out in 5 minutes).
>
> An excerpt like this would be perfectly fine imho:
> «This MediaWiki file is licensed under the terms of GPL 2 or later, as
> published in http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl2 See the COPYING file for
> details.»
>

It has nothing to do with whether or not they know the GPL. As the FLC link
explains, it is about clearly conveying that the code is indeed copyrighted
under a certain license, such that somebody who violates the license cannot
claim innocence or otherwise try and push some of the blame onto us.

That said, I really don't think bikeshedding over reducing a license header
from 4 lines of text to 2 lines really makes a difference. I'd much rather
use the format advised by GNU itself, considering they did write the
license.

(As for the whole warranty disclaimer, which takes up its own 4 lines, I do
not know enough to argue for or against whether it is necessary, since
software liability is a separate legal device from copyright.)

*-- *
*Tyler Romeo*
Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016
Major in Computer Science
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