On Sun, Sep 18, 2022 at 07:00:17PM -0700, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > Regarding > https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Developer%27s_FAQ#Copyright_notices_in_files.2C_SPDX > > On Fri, Sep 09, 2022 at 06:00:13AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > > > > The wiki is incorrect. The SPDX tag deals with the licensing tags > > > > only. It is not a replacement for the copyright notice in any way, and > > > > having been involved with Copyright enforcement I can tell you that at > > > > least in some jurisdictions Copytight notices absolutely do matter. > > This is a very good point. I've expanded the page hopefully correcting the confusion. It has 3 sections, about spdx, about copyright and the community perspective. > The current Wiki page for btrfs (linked above) says: > > There's no need to put the copyright notices in individual files that are > > new, renamed or split. > … > > Note that removing the copyright from existing files is not trivial and > > would require asking the original authors or current copyright holders. The > > status will be inconsistent but at least new contributions won't continue > > adding new ones. The current licensing practices are believed to be > > sufficient. > > This is admittedly a very tough problem to solve. Nevertheless, the concern > that I have with that recommendation above is that it gives copyright holders > whose notices are grandfathered an additional notice preservation that new > copyright holders don't have equal access to. It's particular problematic > because new contributors are unable to have contributions included unless > they remove copyright notices. > > Again, I realize the trade-offs are really tough here; removing existing > copyright notices without explicit permission is a *serious* problem (both a > GPL violation and a statutory violation of copyright generally in many > jurisdictions). OTOH, a list of every last copyright holder is painfully > unwieldy — even if you combine it into a single location. > > Most importantly, I want to point out the bigger, implicit trade-off here > that some may not realize. If you relying on Git history to have copyright > notice information, it does make the entire Git repository a required part of > the complete, corresponding source under GPLv2. This will become even more > certain when contributors are being told that they may *not* include a > copyright notice and that their copyright information will appear in metadata > instead. They can reasonably interpret the “appropriately publish on each > copy an appropriate copyright notice” in GPLv2§1 to mean the copyright > notices in the Git metadata. Thanks for the reply. Oh well, so we basically don't have good options.
