I agree @author tags should be removed and replaced with a mention (or
maybe even a new section) in CREDIT file

Zppix
Volunteer developer for WMF
enwp.org/User:Zppix

On Jun 13, 2017 3:02 PM, "Stas Malyshev" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> > MY understanding is that removing the @author @copyright tags in
> > MediaWiki code represent ownership of the original code placed under the
> > GPL. Subsequent modifications being derivative products.
>
> But there's no way to verify that the code is indeed an original
> creation of whoever is listed under @author, and not a derivative work
> of something else.
>
> > I am not a lawyer, but by dropping the copyright information, I highly
> > suspect that will be a breach of the license.
>
> AFAIK GPL itself does not protect attribution. It allows (optionally) to
> add clauses protecting attribution, but does not require it.
>
> I wonder though, given that Git has all the change history including
> authorship, what is the need to duplicate that information in the source
> code (and risk the two getting out of sync)?
>
> And if we are not considering Git logs to be part of the distribution,
> we're already violating this GPL clause:
>
> You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating
> that you changed the files and the date of any change.
>
> Since you can commit the change (thus causing original work to be
> modified) without such notice, except for Git metadata. We obviously
> consider Git metadata to be enough in this case, why not in any others?
>
> --
> Stas Malyshev
> [email protected]
>
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