Neat. There's a lot of hand rolled implementations of this idea, would be nice to have something to standardize on. I am sure it can be done with custom templates but a good idea IMO might be supporting declarations using SPDX IDs. You see them in some source code, e.g. KDE source code. More info here:
For anyone wondering if this (license information in source files) is necessary, I think the answer is "maybe". Some licenses (e.g. Apache 2) seem to be written such that the license itself requires the disclaimer, and even having copyright information (e.g. users that make substantial contribution adding the name of whoever is assigned the copyright for their contribution to the header) is a good idea. I used to be against this for aesthetic reasons, viewing it somewhat similarly to those annoying corporate email footers, but over time it's become more obvious to me that it not only is great for keeping the license very explicit everywhere but may also be legally a good idea. (IANAL.)
> Some licenses (e.g. Apache 2) seem to be written such that the license itself requires the disclaimer
I don’t believe this is actually true. These instructions are not in the actual license terms and conditions, but rather in a distinct information section after that. In GPL-3.0, “How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs”; in Apache-2.0, “How to apply the Apache License to your work”. My understanding is that such prescriptions and sections are not normative.
From a pure copyright law perspective: no, you definitely don’t need to put the license in each source file. Copyright is automatic these many years, so you don’t even need a copyright line; and license can be (and practically always is) independent of the code. This would obviously¹ hold for warranty disqualification too. Bigger businesses may like to do it for their own convenience of license management, and individuals or groups may like to do it on their work in case individual files are lifted (… as distinct from smaller units, or even taking a file and stripping the header), but basically the era where this sort of thing could arguably be relevant as a mandate is long-past.
There’s even more definitely no need for a dozen lines. If you really want to put anything, one line for a copyright declaration and one line for SPDX-License-Identifier seems fair.
As for copyright lines⸺ bah, they’re such a bunch of drivel. The way people use year ranges, or just bump the year, it’s almost all such legal nonsense. As in, “if this stuff actually mattered, you’d probably have lost your copyright protection” nonsense. The fact of the matter is that copyright year stuff wasn’t designed for such easily-edited stuff as software. It was designed for “first edition copyright 1925; renewed 1935; second edition copyright 1945”, that kind of thing.
—⁂—
¹ “Obviously” here means what a normal person would mean; but I acknowledge that some jurisdictions sometimes hold positions that are obvious nonsense.
Could use a (2021) in the title. No activity since then in the repo
Neat. There's a lot of hand rolled implementations of this idea, would be nice to have something to standardize on. I am sure it can be done with custom templates but a good idea IMO might be supporting declarations using SPDX IDs. You see them in some source code, e.g. KDE source code. More info here:
https://spdx.dev/learn/handling-license-info/
For anyone wondering if this (license information in source files) is necessary, I think the answer is "maybe". Some licenses (e.g. Apache 2) seem to be written such that the license itself requires the disclaimer, and even having copyright information (e.g. users that make substantial contribution adding the name of whoever is assigned the copyright for their contribution to the header) is a good idea. I used to be against this for aesthetic reasons, viewing it somewhat similarly to those annoying corporate email footers, but over time it's become more obvious to me that it not only is great for keeping the license very explicit everywhere but may also be legally a good idea. (IANAL.)
> Some licenses (e.g. Apache 2) seem to be written such that the license itself requires the disclaimer
I don’t believe this is actually true. These instructions are not in the actual license terms and conditions, but rather in a distinct information section after that. In GPL-3.0, “How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs”; in Apache-2.0, “How to apply the Apache License to your work”. My understanding is that such prescriptions and sections are not normative.
From a pure copyright law perspective: no, you definitely don’t need to put the license in each source file. Copyright is automatic these many years, so you don’t even need a copyright line; and license can be (and practically always is) independent of the code. This would obviously¹ hold for warranty disqualification too. Bigger businesses may like to do it for their own convenience of license management, and individuals or groups may like to do it on their work in case individual files are lifted (… as distinct from smaller units, or even taking a file and stripping the header), but basically the era where this sort of thing could arguably be relevant as a mandate is long-past.
There’s even more definitely no need for a dozen lines. If you really want to put anything, one line for a copyright declaration and one line for SPDX-License-Identifier seems fair.
As for copyright lines⸺ bah, they’re such a bunch of drivel. The way people use year ranges, or just bump the year, it’s almost all such legal nonsense. As in, “if this stuff actually mattered, you’d probably have lost your copyright protection” nonsense. The fact of the matter is that copyright year stuff wasn’t designed for such easily-edited stuff as software. It was designed for “first edition copyright 1925; renewed 1935; second edition copyright 1945”, that kind of thing.
—⁂—
¹ “Obviously” here means what a normal person would mean; but I acknowledge that some jurisdictions sometimes hold positions that are obvious nonsense.