RE: Contributors.txt and @author in license headers

-----Original Message----- From: Vincent Massol [mailto:vincent@massol.net] Sent: lundi 13 novembre 2006 16:43 To: 'xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org' Subject: Contributors.txt and @author in license headers Hi, Our license headers say: " * Copyright 2006, XpertNet SARL, and individual contributors as indicated by the contributors.txt." There are 3 problems with this that I can see: 1) It's not really English in that it's either missing a "file" at the end or we should remove the "the" before "contributors" ;-) 2) I cannot find the contributors.txt file! 3) I don't think we should explicitely mention the file name as we'll always risk having to rename all headers if we decide to put this file somewhere else/name it differently. 4) In several of our license headers there are @authors. For example: /* * Copyright 2006, XpertNet SARL, and individual contributors as indicated * by the contributors.txt. [snip] * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public * License along with this software; if not, write to the Free * Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA * 02110-1301 USA, or see the FSF site: http://www.fsf.org. * * @author ravenees * @author jeremi */ I thought the authors were supposed to be indicated in the contributors.txt file! :-) Personally I don't like @author tags and especially not in license headers (actually it's the first time I ever see them put there, they are usually put in the class javadoc). The reason I don't like these tags is because: * they are always not up to date and there are usually mane more authors than the ones listed * we never know what the author has worked on in the file and to what extent. For example someone could have simply added a missing dot in a javdoc. * this information is better defined in the SCM which contains the full history and what everyone has exactly contributed to. So I'd be in favor of implementing the contributors.txt file and removing all @authors tags from the license headers.