The file should have two sections: one to list the copyright holders and the second to provide additional acknowledgements for people who have contributed to DKAN but who are not copyright holders.
Including copyrght holders as copyright notices is required by essentially all FOSS licenses, so this section is required to comply with FOSS licenses.
Having a non copyright holders acknowledgement section is useful in two cases:
1) It gives us a space to acknowledge the contributions of people who are not technically copyright holders because they made their contribution as a employee of a company. Or it could be other folks that have contributed to the project in a way besides writing source code (i.e. provides support to the community on mailing lists, promotion, helped with project organization, etc....)
2) CivicActions (and other companies perhaps) often have contracts with government agencies that require them to include a statement when anything is published as a result of the government contract. Often it is a statement of non-endorsement or an acknowledgement of government funding, the exact wording depends on the contract.
The file should have two sections: one to list the copyright holders and the second to provide additional acknowledgements for people who have contributed to DKAN but who are not copyright holders.
Including copyrght holders as copyright notices is required by essentially all FOSS licenses, so this section is required to comply with FOSS licenses.
Having a non copyright holders acknowledgement section is useful in two cases: 1) It gives us a space to acknowledge the contributions of people who are not technically copyright holders because they made their contribution as a employee of a company. Or it could be other folks that have contributed to the project in a way besides writing source code (i.e. provides support to the community on mailing lists, promotion, helped with project organization, etc....)
2) CivicActions (and other companies perhaps) often have contracts with government agencies that require them to include a statement when anything is published as a result of the government contract. Often it is a statement of non-endorsement or an acknowledgement of government funding, the exact wording depends on the contract.