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Re: [jgit-dev] RE: [egit-dev] Rewriting JGit history and standard comment template 
Alex Blewitt <alex.blewitt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 11 Feb 2010, at 00:12, Robin Rosenberg wrote:
> > onsdagen den 10 februari 2010 23.34.20 skrev  Shawn O. Pearce:
> >> That first line, "Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER>" is *not* for the
> >> organization issuing the license.  Its for the copyright holder(s)
> >> of the content(s) of the file(s) that the license was attached to.
> >> 
> >> Asking us to include "Copyright (c) 2007, Eclipse Foundation,
> >> Inc. and its licensors." as in [3,4] is a literal translation of
> >> the OSI license in [1], without understanding the point of that line.
> >> 
> >> Yikes.  That scares me even more.
> > 
> > Me too. Someone might actually think Eclipse owns the code, when
> > it doesn't. I don't think we should do that. Or someone point to to
> > a place where a laywer explains this is detail. Groklaw?
> 
> I don't believe I've ever seen a line which says Copyright (c)
> Eclipse Foundation Inc. and its licensors at Eclipse. I suspect this
> must have been a miscommunication, because I don't believe that is
> sensible. The EPL is a license, not a copyright transfer; and the
> Eclipse Foundation doesn't receive copyright on any contributions
> from a committer or a contributor.

See [1].  Its right below "Eclipse Distribution License - v 1.0".

[1] http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/jgit-dev/msg00104.html

> That's it. There's no copyright grant to the Eclipse Foundation,

Right.  Robin and are I are pointing out EMO's apparent request to
include that copyright line is wrong.

> and there's certainly not pages and pages of text that goes with
> it.

Two things there:

1) BSD licenses have often been just repeated entirely in the
   headers of the files they cover.  I don't know why, maybe it
   dates back to the original uses of it.  But its often done.
   So there's some expectation that a BSD covered file will have
   the BSD in the header.

2) JGit is *pure* EDL.  No EPL.  No EPL/EDL dual license.  There was
   a lot of concern at the board of directors and EMO levels that
   a contributor who is used to EPL might assume JGit code is also
   EPL and copy it without thinking.  Using a radically different
   header, one that is so in-your-face due to its size, might help
   folks to realize "Whoa, that's not the usual EPL header, what
   does it say?".

So its intentional in JGit.  I've actually insisted on it.

The downside is, copy or rename of small classes confuses the Git
rename/copy detection code, because there's more copyright notice
than there is distinct Java source.

> Furthermore, I don't think it's necessary to include the full
> body of the license in each header file, in much the same way that
> the standard EDL header points to a license on disk (and by web).

See above.  Its an intentional request on my part that we *do*
include the full text of the EDL.

-- 
Shawn.

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