Document Twisted copyright policy

[hypatia]

Sorry about this can of worms, folks.

Coming out of yesterday's discussion on #twisted: lifeless wishes to retain
copyright of one of his own files when he contributes it to Twisted under the
MIT licence. As I understand it, this is compatible with Glyph's last statement
on the subject at
http://twistedmatrix.com/pipermail/twisted-python/2005-August/011255.html

lifeless also questioned how we do this: specifically, do we strip other
people's copyright statements out of individual MIT files that originate
elsewhere and which are contributed to Twisted. radix was unsure. It seems we
shouldn't take these statements and move them to the LICENSE file, as best I can
tell. Any ideas?

[hypatia]

Oh and does anyone have a good sense of a shorthand for referring to our
copyright. Is "Copyright 200x-2005 Twisted Matrix Laboratories except where
noted in individual files" or anything like it a meaningful or correct statement
any more?

[Glyph]

I think that technically speaking we're not supposed to remove copyright
statements from individual files, but they also become gradually invalid
as more contributors add significant portions to particular files.
Since MIT license says not to remove the notice, I don't think we can
make a policy of removing it.

In this case, we'd ask lifeless to remove the copyright notices if he is
comfortable with doing that, and if not, leave them there.  It's just an
aesthetic preference of mine that license crap not pollute the top of
every single file in the system.

[Thijs Triemstra]

Are there any wiki pages for the current Twisted copyright policy? Should we create a .xhtml doc? It can be a few lines, we'd at least need something (and this ticket indicates there's nothing atm).

[Thijs Triemstra]

(In [24697]) Branching to 'copyright-policy-1262'

[Thijs Triemstra]

Added a copyright header section to the coding standard doc in r24698, putting it up for review.

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

Perhaps this should also discuss what to do in the case described in the first comment on this ticket. I think the resolution is that we leave it, but once we start editing the file, we also add the Twisted copyright.

[Thijs Triemstra]

Replying to exarkun:

Perhaps this should also discuss what to do in the case described in the first comment on this ticket. I think the resolution is that we leave it, but once we start editing the file, we also add the Twisted copyright.

I added a note for this in r24732 and rewrote the XXX part a little. Up for review.

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

Great, please merge.

[Thijs Triemstra]

(In [24747]) Merge copyright-policy-1262: Added a copyright header section to the coding standard doc.

Author: thijs Reviewer: exarkun Fixes: #1262