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pkgjs housekeeping: AUTHORS / LICENSE files #368
Description
Following up some questions from #348 and things we discussed in the meetings. I think this one is probably for legal, right @mhdawson?
- The (c) authors part in some
LICENSEtemplates says e.g. "ci-travis-config contributors", in some others it says "Copyright Node.js contributors". Can we stick to just "Copyright Node.js contributors." (so that it's easy to copy/paste theLICENSEfile) or does it have to spell out each repo name?- We can probably skip the year, as the main license file doesn't have it?
- The
ci-config-*repos have theAUTHORSfile added there. Is that file necessary?- The list of contributors is always there in the git history? We can probably enforce that the
mastercannot be overwritten? - If the file is actually necessary - does the org already have a tool to generate it? Are there any rules around what should go into it? Can we simply add a link to the Github "Contributors" tab and be done with it or does it have to be provider agnostic and have an actual list of people?
- The list of contributors is always there in the git history? We can probably enforce that the
- In some cases we have a link to that
AUTHORSfile from theLICENSE. Is that link necessary? The https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/LICENSE itself does not have it.
Activity
mhdawson commentedon May 25, 2020
This is still draft but I think answers a number of the questions: https://github.com/openjs-foundation/cross-project-council/pull/414/files
I think it says
In terms of needing an
AUTHORSfile or not, I'm not sure @brianwarner can you clarify that?mhdawson commentedon May 25, 2020
In terms of just using "Copyright Node.js contributors.", I'm not sure that's correct as the AUTHORs listed for Node.js may not include people who have contributed to pkgjs.
ljharb commentedon May 25, 2020
Can’t we just say “contributors”? Most projects don’t have an authors file and aren’t that specific about it.
brianwarner commentedon May 25, 2020
Yes, best to just use "Node.js contributors".
ljharb commentedon May 25, 2020
I even meant, unqualified - just the word “contributors”
brianwarner commentedon May 25, 2020
We recommend keeping at least the project name. But these lines are mainly a courtesy in the grand scheme of things, so it's not a big deal either way.
"Copyright notices are not mandatory in order for the contributor to retain ownership of their copyright."
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2020/01/copyright-notices-in-open-source-software-projects/
dominykas commentedon Jun 2, 2020
Just to clarify, can we use "Node.js contributors" for any project under nodejs/pkgjs orgs, or do we have to say "wiby contributors" for wiby?
dominykas commentedon Jun 16, 2020
Discussed during #371, came to a proposal to use the following for the (c) line:
@brianwarner is that good enough?
brianwarner commentedon Jun 16, 2020
Sure, that looks like it would work, and is a clean and efficient way to show where it came from. It also fits with the idea of keeping minimal info here, as it's less likely to get stale over the years. I'd say go for it!
dominykas commentedon Jun 16, 2020
Thanks!
dominykas commentedon Jul 15, 2020
Opened all the relevant PRs, closing this.
Thanks everyone for the input.