search

fsfe / reuse-docs

REUSE recommendations, tutorials, FAQ and specification
https://reuse.software
19 stars 20 forks source link

Spec: Add a statement at the start clarifying that a comment header in every file is preferable #25

Closed carmenbianca closed 5 years ago

carmenbianca commented 5 years ago

Thread: https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-docs/pull/23#discussion_r285212278

Relevant section:

This specification defines a standardized method for declaring copyright and
licensing for software projects. The goal of the specification is to have
unambiguous, machine-readable copyright and licensing information for each
individual file in a project.

@silverhook

Perhaps also add why we the aim is to have license info in every file.

@carmenbianca

I'm sorry I don't understand well enough what you mean here.

@mxmehl

I think @silverhook means that there is a big benefit of having copyright information in the files, not somewhere else like a DEP-5 file, because they will retain even if just a single file is copied from a project. Right?

@silverhook

Yes, that’s exactly what I meant with that suggestion.

carmenbianca commented 5 years ago

I'm not sure if this is needed per se in the preamble of the spec. The spec itself already makes a clear recommendation of comment headers over DEP5. But here would be my suggestion:

This specification defines a standardized method for declaring copyright and licensing for software projects. The goal of the specification is to have unambiguous, machine-readable copyright and licensing information for each individual file in a project. Ideally this information is embedded into every file, so that the information is preserved when the file is copied and reused by third parties.

mxmehl commented 5 years ago

LGTM, thanks!

silverhook commented 5 years ago

LGTM. Perhaps we should expand it to say “machine- and human-readable copyright and licensing information”.

carmenbianca commented 5 years ago

Added in d85fe57