GSIP 147

GSIP 147 - Align with Geotools copyright header management practices

Overview

Align with the simplified copyright management policy recently approved in GeoTools.

Proposed By

Andrea Aime

Assigned to Release

This is not release/branch specific, applies to all code being modified in the version control

State

Choose one of:

• [] Under Discussion
• In Progress
• Completed
• Rejected
• Deferred

Motivation

The current requirement to update the last modified year in copyright header is deemed too cumbersome by many, and it's not clear if it actually provides extra protection in terms of code copyright.

Proposal

The new copyright header management policy is as simple as:

• Add a copyright header, with the current year, to each new file
• Add a copyright header to each modified file without one (using the current year)
• Otherwise do not change the copyright header when an existing file is modified

For example, if a new file is created in 2017 the copyright header would look as follows:

/* (c) 2017 Open Source Geospatial Foundation - all rights reserved
 * This code is licensed under the GPL 2.0 license, available at the root
 * application directory.
 */

Implementation

No changes to the existing files are foreseen, but a simple change in policy for the new ones.

Feedback

This section should contain feedback provided by PSC members who may have a problem with the proposal.

Tasks

• Update the contributing.md and pull request review guides.
• Update the committing page in the developer guide

Backwards Compatibility

No known backwards compatibility issues.

Voting

• Alessio Fabiani: +1
• Andrea Aime: +1
• Ben Caradoc Davies: +1
• Brad Hards: +1
• Christian Mueller:
• Ian Turton: +1
• Jody Garnett: +0
• Jukka Rahkonen: +1
• Kevin Smith: +0
• Simone Giannecchini: +1