Update the copyright header specified in the handbook

[Emily-Jiang]

This project needs to address the comments regarding copyright.

https://github.com/jakartaee/cdi-tck/pull/522#issuecomment-1887267172

[starksm64]

The EPL is not the correct copyright and license. The referenced handbook entry: https://www.eclipse.org/projects/handbook/#ip-copyright-headers

has no requirement to make Eclipse the copyright holder and CDI is Apache licensed. The only problem the EF had with the use of the old JBoss headers was the use of the "JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source" line. There was a request to have that removed previously, and that has been done. The remainder of the content is fine, and this is the header that should be used:

/*

• Copyright , Red Hat, Inc., and individual contributors
• by the @authors tag. See the copyright.txt in the distribution for a
• full listing of individual contributors.
• Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
• you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
• You may obtain a copy of the License at
• http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
• Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
• distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
• WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
• See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
• limitations under the License. */

[Ladicek]

There was a request to have that removed previously, and that has been done.

AFAIK only in the CDI specification, not in the TCK. We need to purge this line from the TCK as well.

Other than that, thanks for clarifying the correct header. We could experiment with a Maven plugin to verify that license headers are present, because omitting is supereasy.

[Emily-Jiang]

@starksm64 do you mean all files contributed to this project need to specify Copyright, Red Hat, Inc,. even though some contributors do not work for Red Hat? cc @waynebeaton

[waynebeaton]

The initial copyright holder gets to decide what the copyright statement should be. If it's new content, the authors of that content are the ones who decide the form of the copyright statement.

So... unless staff from the Eclipse Foundation actually authored the content (or there is some agreement in place that grants the EF copyright of the author's work), it makes no sense to attribute copyright to the Eclipse Foundation. Likewise, it only makes sense to attribute copyright to Red Hat when Red Hat employees (or individuals working under contract for Red Hat) author the content.

The copyright header that @Emily-Jiang is referencing attributes copyright to "Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation", not the EF directly. Whether or not the project team chooses to use that as the copyright header is the team's decision.

A copyright header should include the year that the original content was authored.

[waynebeaton]

AFAICT all of the cited content was authored by an IBM employee, so copyright should be attributed to IBM. When somebody else contributes, they can either add another copyright line or add ", and others" to the existing assertion. Or the project team can opt to use the "Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation" variant.

[Ladicek]

Submitted #527 to remove the JBoss tagline.

[Azquelt]

Submitted #528 to add headers to Java source files which don't have them.

Based on the eclispe handbook, we should really have a header in every file which allows it (I.e. any xml files, scripts and other resources) but I've done the java source first as that's probably the most relevant.

[Azquelt]

We did ask the question in the last spec call as to whether we should switch to a header which doesn't explicitly name the copyright holder. Jakarta Data do this and in their notice file they say to use the source code history to find the copyright owners.

I don't feel strongly either way, though it might be slightly easier to maintain as all files would then have the same header.

I assume the license doesn't prevent us from making this sort of change? I note it does say that when distributing, "You must retain [...] all copyright [...] and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work".

[Emily-Jiang]

I think it is much earlier to use the universal "Eclipse Foundation" as we are collaborating under the EF.

We did ask the question in the last spec call as to whether we should switch to a header which doesn't explicitly name the copyright holder. Jakarta Data do this and in their notice file they say to use the source code history to find the copyright owners.

I don't feel strongly either way, though it might be slightly easier to maintain as all files would then have the same header.

I thought we discussed and agreed to use Eclipse Foundation instead of using a particular company, which is the same approach we did for all of the MP projects. I really think it is nicer to use Eclipse Foundation instead of naming a particular company. In this way, all other contributors will just use the same header.

I assume the license doesn't prevent us from making this sort of change? I note it does say that when distributing, "You must retain [...] all copyright [...] and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work".

[Emily-Jiang]

At today's CDI call, we have agreed that for the files not contributing by Red Hat, use the following copyright text: Copyright (c) <year> Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation

[Azquelt]

Still to do on this issue:

• [x] remove the references to @authors and copyright.txt from the file headers #540
• [ ] add copyright headers to non-Java files which are still missing them
• [x] add the required legal information files to the root of the repository #541