kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/12/2016 4:00 PM, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> I went to update copyright.h to reflect the use of AUTHORS.txt and I've got a
> couple more questions about the header.
> 
> - There are discrepancies between GPL license versions. copyright.h itself says
>   "version 3 ... or any later version" in one place, but links to version 2
>   later. Other files say "version 2 ... or any later version". We really need
>   to fix this so it's clear which version we are licensed under. I'd like to go
>   through all source files and ensure they all give the correct version. Can
>   Wayne please clarify that the intended version is indeed "version 3 or
>   later"?

The link should be fixed.  The intended version is 3 or later.  As 2 or
later includes 3 or later, I see no reason to go back and change the
original copyright notice.

> 
> - We really need to update the copyright years. Currently we're doing a sort of
>   "update them as you work on files" but that isn't really working out, people
>   are forgetting to. Would anybody be too annoyed if I swept through and
>   updated all the headers in every file? I'll make sure they're all in a
>   regular format and then leave a script in scripts/ to repeat this in the
>   future.

I would rather you didn't do this.  I'm not thrilled with the idea of
rebuilding most if not all of kicad just to update copyright dates.
Everyone, please make sure you update the copyright dates when you edit
source files.

> 
> - copyright.h currently advises placing two copyright lines, one for the
>   primary author and one to "KiCad Developers". Is this really necessary? It
>   seems to me a bit pointless, as file authorship is quite dynamic over time.
>   Perhaps for new files we could just do a single "Copyright (C) 2016 KiCad
>   Developers"?
> 

I would like to to keep the original author copyright since technically
they are the copyright holder not the project itself.  It's not a
terribly huge burden to maintain it.  You should only add your name to
the copyright notice if you make significant changes to the file.  This
has always been the unwritten policy.  There is a copyright section in
the coding policy.  I can update it to include this.