On Fri, Mar 08, 2013 at 10:54:58AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: > None of the C files contain copyright or license information, which is > a good idea: > > http://tieguy.org/blog/2012/03/17/on-the-importance-of-per-file-license-information/
Please, don't! There are at least three reasons why not: * It adds significant amount of legal spam that gets into way. Every single time someone looks through one of the files, it takes a second or two to skip past the header. This wastes time that could be spent coding or debugging. * Such notices invariably become inaccurate. Unless every single contributor takes care to meticulously update this information (and hardly anyone does), it will be at best misleading. On the other hand, a global license file carries less data and thus has a fair chance of being valid (as you don't need to care about individual files). And if you use version control, you already have per-file -- and even, per-line, authorship tracking that requires no manual effort to update. * It is legally dubious whether anyone will be able to cut this spam away once it gets there, kind of like an epoch. -- ᛊᚨᚾᛁᛏᚣ᛫ᛁᛊ᛫ᚠᛟᚱ᛫ᚦᛖ᛫ᚹᛖᚨᚲ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130308181624.ga6...@angband.pl
