Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Copyright notice on source files

[Philippe Plantier]

Ben Anderman wrote:
> I think there should be some policy about copyright notices on source 
> files. Currently most source files seem to have this one:
>
> Copyright (C) 2003 by David White <address@hidden>
> Part of the Battle for Wesnoth Project http://wesnoth.whitevine.net
>
> I notice that someone (silene?) has updated the one in 
> multiplayer_lobby.cpp, but, is everyone else updating them when they 
> modify source files? Also, at least clipboard.cpp and network_worker.cpp 
> don't have a copyright at all (or any kind of header.)

There have been numerous rants about this, by various developers, but 
nothing has ever been done :)

The main problems are that:

* This may be considered rude / evil / illegal to modify a copyright 
notice created by someone else, or to add a copyright notice assigning 
copyright to someone else.
* There is no policy on wesnoth copyright notices, so nobody knows 
exactly what to do anyway.

So far, we have code which pretends to be:

* Copyrighted by David White <address@hidden>: most of the code
* Copyrighted by Philippe Plantier <address@hidden> (that's me): 
builder.cpp, the "label" widget, animated.?pp, the terrain cutter utilities.
* Copyrighted by Guillaume Melquiond <address@hidden>: 
animated.cpp, the scrollarea widget, everything under serialization/
* Copyrighted by Isaac Clarencia: wassert.cpp
* Copyrighted, but by nobody: the multiplayer lobby. I am guilty for those.
* Without any copyright notice of any kind: the following files :

ai2.hpp
array.hpp
cavegen.cpp
cavegen.hpp
clipboard.cpp
clipboard.hpp
cursor.cpp
cursor.hpp
events.cpp
events.hpp
filechooser.cpp
gettext.cpp
gettext.hpp
global.hpp
halo.cpp
halo.hpp
image.cpp
image.hpp
map_create.cpp
map_create.hpp
map_label.cpp
map_label.hpp
mapgen.cpp
mapgen.hpp
mapgen_dialog.cpp
mapgen_dialog.hpp
network.cpp
network.hpp
network_worker.cpp
network_worker.hpp
pathutils.cpp
publish_campaign.cpp
publish_campaign.hpp
race.cpp
race.hpp
reports.cpp
reports.hpp
statistics.cpp
statistics.hpp
theme.cpp
theme.hpp
thread.cpp
thread.hpp
titlescreen.cpp
titlescreen.hpp
tooltips.cpp
tooltips.hpp
unit_display.cpp
unit_display.hpp
wml_separators.hpp
campaign_server/campaign_server.cpp
editor/scenario_editor.cpp
editor/scenario_editor.hpp
server/game.cpp
server/game.hpp
server/input_stream.cpp
server/input_stream.hpp
server/metrics.cpp
server/metrics.hpp
server/player.cpp
server/player.hpp
server/server.cpp
server/variable.cpp
tools/key_test.cpp
widgets/menu.cpp
widgets/menu.hpp
widgets/progressbar.cpp
widgets/progressbar.hpp
widgets/widget.cpp
widgets/widget.hpp
zip/zip.cpp
zipios++/xcoll.cpp
zipios++/xcoll.hpp

To be short: files have the copyright of the person which introduced the 
file first. Well, sometimes they do, that is. Considering that very few 
files have, actually, a single author, we can consider that all 
copyright headers are wrong.

I do think (and, apparently, am not the only one to) that this situation 
should be fixed.

I'd like to call for comments on the following proposal for a header 
policy for the Wesnoth source code. For comments from anyone which 
contributes / contributed code from Wesnoth, and especially from Dave, 
who, as lead developer and owner of most of the code from Wesnoth, will 
be the one to decide, in the end ;)

0) Each file should have a copyright header.

1) Each developer should add a copyright notice on each file he 
modifies, when said modification is more than a trivial one-line bugfix.

2) Each developer should, upon commiting a patch from a non-developer, 
ask the patch author for a name, an e-mail, and any additional copyright 
information which may be necessary (for example, some BSD copyright 
notice, etc).

3) Copyright headers may be added by any developer ; provided said 
developer has proof the information provided is correct. A CVS log of a 
commit being a sufficient proof. However, this should be useless, if 
developers correctly follow points 1) and 2)

4) Copyright headers should have the following format:

/* $Id$ */
/*
   Copyright (C) 2002-2005 by David White <address@hidden>
   Copyright (C) 2002,2004-2005 Foo Bar <address@hidden>
   Copyright (C) 2005 Oink Gruik <address@hidden>

   Part of the Battle for Wesnoth Project http://www.wesnoth.org

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.

   See the COPYING file for more details.
*/

I volunteer to script the changes on existing files, if necessary.

Cheers,

Philippe