Hi Bruno, Are you aware that for Taler and GNUnet we have a copyright assignment to GNUnet e.V. and that the GNUnet e.V. (or Taler Systems SA) is listed as the copyright holder in each file, and that those should/would be the ones enforcing the (A)GPL anyway?
However, your point is slightly more valid for GNU libmicrohttpd / GNU libextractor. Still, there we have the *dominant* author(s) names in the copyright header as well -- and I'm not proposing to remove _those_. So for example, if the file does say on top: /* This file is part of PACKAGE Copyright (C) 2007-2018 MAJOR AUTHOR */ does it really help to have an additional authors below? I'd think having a very tiny number of authors (or organizations) listed in a file makes it much easier for *those listed there* to enforce the GPL than if you have the kitchen-sink of everybody who ever added a line. So in my view, we should of course make sure that those lines list people or orgs willing and able to enforce the (X)GPL, but having _also_ the @authors comments should not be required. Do you agree? Best, Christian On 10/7/19 8:06 PM, Bruno Haible wrote: > Hi Christian, > >> we would still have >> both the top-level AUTHORS file and the attribution via the Git history. >> >> So, please do let me know if you (for whatever reason) would object to >> removing the per-source file @author attributions. > > Mails sent to gnu-community-private on 2019-09-25 14:10 GMT and > 2019-09-27 12:09 GMT give a convincing argumentation that, in order > to enforce the GPL in the EU, for contributors who are not doing > paid work, the contributors must be mentioned in the respective > source files. > > Removing all @author lines from the source code makes the GPL > practically unenforceable in the EU. Look at the Christoph Hellwig > vs. VMware case for an example. He failed because the court was > not willing to wade through git logs and 'git annotate' pictures; > they want something simpler than that. > > Bruno >
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