Re: [PATCH 0/2] Two janitorial patches for builtin/blame.c

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 21, 2014, 19:15 UTC
Message-ID: <20140121191531.GH18964@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <87zjmpp672.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org>

David Kastrup wrote:

> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

>> Any idea how this could be made more clear?  E.g., maybe we should
>> bite the bullet and add a line to all source files that don't already
>> state a license:
>>
>> 	/*
>> 	 * License: GPLv2.  See COPYING for details.
>> 	 */
>
> Probably somewhat more verbose like "This file may be distributed under
> the conditions of the GPLv2.  See the file COPYING for details".
> I think there are boilerplate texts for that.

All else being equal, longer is worse.

> Whatever the exact wording, that would be the cleanest way I think.  The
> respective Documentation/SubmittingPatches text looks like it is quoted
> from somewhere else, so adapting it to the realities of files without
> clear copyright statement seems less straightforward.

Hm, the wording comes from the Linux kernel project, where it's also pretty normal not to have a license notice in every file (and where the default license is also GPLv2).

Is the problem the phrase "indicated in the file", or is the problem e.g. the lack of a pointer to https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/blob/development/git.git-authors?

Jonathan