Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] GLEP 76: Copyright Policy

[Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 9:25 AM, NP-Hardass <NP-Hardass@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 06/10/2018 04:34 PM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> Copyright Attribution
>> ---------------------
>>
>> All files included in Gentoo projects must contain an appropriate
>> copyright notice, as defined by this policy.
>>
>> A proper copyright notice appears near the top of the file, and reads::
>>
>>     Copyright YEARS LARGEST-CONTRIBUTOR [OTHER-CONTRIBUTORS] and others
>>
>> The largest contributor is whatever entity owns copyright to some
>> portion of the largest number of lines in the file.  Additional
>> contributors can be listed, but this is neither required nor
>> recommended.  The "and others" text may be omitted if the explicitly
>> listed contributors hold copyright to the entire file.
>
> Why is this not recommended? Here are a couple of scenarios that came to
> mind that lead to me to question how that would play out:
> If developer A writes 51% of the lines of an ebuild and developer B
> writes 49%, should B not be listed?
> What if all the metadata lines defining variables consists of 75% of the
> file and was written by A, but the core functionality of the ebuild (25%
> by size) was written by B?
> If A writes an ebuild, and B replaces a majority (>50%) of the ebuild,
> should B remove A from attribution?
> I think that specifying that substantial (though not necessarily
> specific in defining this) contributions/contributors should included in
> the copyright attribution and that substantial contribution attribution
> *is* recommended.

Don't think about the copyright line as attribution or credit. Some
projects I work on have Author: lines in files, which I've always
found irritating because they're often out of date and generally
useless -- if you want attribution just look at git log.