It's not clear any of these files in profiles/* are actually copyrightable. I mentioned automatically adding headers for pkgdev (repoman replacement) in https://github.com/pkgcore/pkgdev/issues/11, but we ended up discussing about the need for the headers in the first place. Could we just drop them?
GLEP 76 says: "All copyrightable files included in Gentoo projects must contain appropriate copyright and license notices, as defined by this policy." The comments in these files may very well be copyrightable. $ find profiles -type f -exec wc {} + | tail -n1 23612 97015 780821 total I believe we'd have a hard time arguing that this is small and below the threshold or originality. Plus, it is arguably a database and may be protected by "sui generis database rights" in the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_Directive So, let's please stay on the safe side and keep the headers. These few lines don't harm, and we already omit the header from files that are obviously trivial (like eapi or parent).
Also, we require a Signed-off-by line for every commit, which must refer to a license. When drafting GLEP 76, we considered lifting that requirement for files that are in the public domain, but decided that labelling such files with "CC0" or "CC Public Domain Mark" is preferable, in order to remove any doubt about their public domain status. This is mentioned in https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0076.html#id32 (last paragraph of the section).
(In reply to Ulrich Müller from comment #1) > GLEP 76 says: "All copyrightable files included in Gentoo projects must > contain appropriate copyright and license notices, as defined by this > policy." This feels very haphazard since the headers aren't even applied to all files in a cohesive fashion. One reason might be that no editor syntax project currently auto-adds them when a developer creates a new file as is done for ebuilds using skel.ebuild. > So, let's please stay on the safe side and keep the headers. These few lines > don't harm, and we already omit the header from files that are obviously > trivial (like eapi or parent). Personally I'd call all the profiles/* trivial files, but if we want to go down that route... how come files in the base directory don't have headers? For example, I'm not seeing headers in arches.desc, info_*, and profiles.desc even when they have other comments in the header.
What if someone writes a creative mask message? ;-)
(In reply to Michał Górny from comment #4) > What if someone writes a creative mask message? ;-) OK, that's enough. Closing.
Reopening because I'd like an actual response as to why Gentoo isn't applying this "standard" consistently across profiles/* then. Trivial searches show even files like package.mask aren't always prefixed with copyrights in every subdir.
(In reply to Tim Harder from comment #6) > Reopening because I'd like an actual response as to why Gentoo isn't > applying this "standard" consistently across profiles/* then. Trivial > searches show even files like package.mask aren't always prefixed with > copyrights in every subdir. I agree, we should be more consistent there. AFAICS, any file except "parent", "eapi", and "deprecated" (where PMS explicitly forbids comments) could have a standard header. Arguably, a header won't be needed for very small files (e.g., the FSF draws the limit at 15 lines [1]). But adding them everywhere may be simpler, and then they won't be forgotten when a file is growing. [1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Legally-Significant.html
(In reply to Ulrich Müller from comment #7) > I agree, we should be more consistent there. AFAICS, any file except > "parent", "eapi", and "deprecated" (where PMS explicitly forbids comments) > could have a standard header. > > Arguably, a header won't be needed for very small files (e.g., the FSF draws > the limit at 15 lines [1]). But adding them everywhere may be simpler, and > then they won't be forgotten when a file is growing. > > [1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Legally-Significant.html Sounds fine. I don't overly care what the mandate is, just if Gentoo expects a standard header consistency aids verification (pkgcheck) and automatically adding/updating them (pkgdev).
Without a vote, the council tends to recommend just keeping the header / putting it in everywhere.
