[Python-Dev] Copyright notices in modules

[Raymond Hettinger]

[Raymond Hettinger]
>> I'm at a loss of why the notice needs to be there at all.

[GvR]
> There's a difference between contributing a whole file and
> contributing a patch. Patches do not require copyright notices. Whole
> files do. This is not affected by later edits to the file.

That makes sense.  In general though, I think if a contributor isn't
required by their company to add a copyright, then this sort of thing
should be left out of the source code.  Most of the contributors here
don't seem to copyright-up everything they do (with the exception
of big packages or externally maintained resources).

If everyone making a significant contribution has a contributor agreement
on file, perhaps we can build a list of those in a single file rather than
scattering notices throughout the code.  I don't see that those benefit
anyone (maintainers, the original contributor, or the contributor's
company).

At least these notices are somewhat innocuous.  The ones that were
the most irritating are the ones requiring a literal copy of the notice
to be placed in the docs.  A while back, I spent a day getting us in
compliance with those.

FWIW, I'm not picking on anyone.  I would just like to see a practice
emerge where these stop getting added and perhaps start getting removed
unless they are actually necessary for some reason (i.e. a company requires it).

AFAICT, little notices like the one atop numbers.py don't confer property
rights to anyone.  The original purpose of a copyright notice has been lost.
It has become useless boilerplate, a toothless warning sign about a unclaimable
property claim on donated code.


Raymond


P.S.  It seems silly that the copyright on PEP3141 says, "this document has 
been placed in the public domain" but the code itself has a company copyright.
The former seems like something someone would care more about as a
creative expression or original research.