[Python-Dev] Copyright notices

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:20:59 +0100
"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> Nadeem Vawda wrote:
> > I was wondering what the policy is regarding copyright notices and license
> > boilerplate text at the top of source files.
> > 
> > I am currently rewriting the bz2 module (see http://bugs.python.org/issue5863),
> > splitting the existing Modules/bz2module.c into Modules/_bz2module.c and
> > Lib/bz2.py.
> > 
> > Are new files expected to include a copyright notice and/or license boilerplate
> > text? 
> 
> Since you'll be adding new IP to Python, the new code you write should
> contain your copyright and the standard PSF contributor agreement
> notice, e.g.

I agree with Raymond's argument that we shouldn't add *new* copyright
boilerplate:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-January/085267.html

(the original question was about whether to keep the old one)

Authorship (and therefore "IP") is much better documented by version
control than by static chunks of text. These often become hopelessly
outdated, and therefore give wrong information about who actually
authored the code.

Regards

Antoine.