[coreboot] Long license headers (ANGER WARNING)

[ron minnich]

We've had this discussion before, many times. I've pointed out many times
it can be easy, using a form that's now over 20 years old. This is taken
from linux.

* *	Copyright 1993 United States Government as represented by the
 *	Director, National Security Agency.
 *
 *	This software may be used and distributed according to the terms
 *	of the GNU General Public License, incorporated herein by reference.*


*it doesn't get much simpler than that. I just wish we could get
buyin. You're not required to cite the NSA. use your own company.*


*ron*


On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 10:07 PM Alexandru Gagniuc <mr.nuke.me at gmail.com>
wrote:

> There's this thing called a copyright notice, which is pretty cool. When
> coding on 24" monitors or larger, it's this tiny thing that keeps some
> legal
> history of a file. The world is perfect and there are no issues!
>
> Then FSF comes and teaches us to be in-your-face with a 20+ line copyright
> notice, and laptops happen. And 14" screens become a long-forgotten glory.
> Now
> you have to *BLEEP*ing scroll down every time you open a file just to get
> to
> the real content. It becomes so annoying, that I will personally stop
> giving
> positive gerrit scores on any CL that introduces such a file.
>
> Then we get to situations where we waste all that copyright notice space
> for
> one line of code [1]. This madness has to stop.
>
> Tell me what the file does, add your (C) line, tell me how you license the
> file, and move on! Start coding already for *BLEEP*'s sake! Here:
>
> /*
>  * On copyright notices: Angry email to coreboot mailing list
>  *
>  * Copyright (C) Some really pissed off guy <angry at mad.com>
>  * Licensed under WTFPL, or, at your option, Allah Akbar public license.
>  */
>
> There, you've achieved the same thing as that abomination of notice that we
> need to change whenever some third party moves its headquarters. Now I can
> open a file and see
>
> /*
>  * On the subject of flowers and sunny skies
>  *
> ...
>
> and I immediately know I'm in the wrong place. Be pragmatic! Be practical!
> Tell me what your file does. Talk about it. Document stuff. It's a much
> better
> use of space. I could probably kidnap any of you, torture you asking for
> your
> bank information, and you'd be much more likely to recite, without error,
> all
> versions of the GPL.
>
> And once that's settled, we can start migrating all files to concise
> notices,
> while keeping the exact same information we had before.
>
> TL;DR
>
> 1) Tell me about your file
> 2) Add your (C) line
> 3) Document the license of your choosing (in 1 line)
> 4) Move on to coding!
>
> [1] http://review.coreboot.org/#/c/8488/10/src/cpu/amd/model_
> 10xxx/ram_calc.h
>
> Alex
> --
> coreboot mailing list: coreboot at coreboot.org
> http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/attachments/20150303/c596dc7b/attachment.html>