txawsteam team mailing list archive

[Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2009-08-20 at 03:36 +0000, Elliot Murphy wrote:
> Thanks a lot for the quick review. The code is very much in the state  
> it was being used internally, and I think your comments all make sense  
> and will improve the code. I differ on the license header thing - I  
> explicitly chose not to copy the existing indirect way of specifying  
> the license. You'd need to go back to the copyright holder to change  
> the license anyway, so specifying the license that way is not a good  
> idea IMO.


Licensing is important - while we build free/open source software on the
hack of using copyright to ensure the right to copy :). I think you'll
find all the existing code in txaws uses the pithy approach; the work as
a whole is whats licensed : the centralisation isn't to make /changing/
the license easy - its to make auditing, checking and reading code
easier. Debian for instance, wants to be sure that all relevant licences
are listed; having the licence duplicated in many source files makes
that harder. There is also a DRY aspect to it.

If you believe there is a risk that the code won't be properly protected
(from what - the project licence is MIT - essentially public domain)
then we should certainly investigate that further. Otherwise, I don't
see what is gained by having the same text duplicated in each file, and
really think the shorter reference is much more pleasant. (When I first
joined the project, I'm not even sure there _was_ a license :)).

> Just to set expectations, ...o be up front and explain that this branch  
> will probably sit for a couple of months before lucio or I or  
> Christian will be able to give it that level of attention. I'd  
> actually like to kill the whole contrib directory too.
> -- 

That's fine with me too - now its out there its possible for someone to
stand up and clean it up too.

-Rob

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