Add explicit copyright statements

[jawnsy]

Hi,

I only casually perused the source code, so forgive me if I've missed it somewhere. I'd like to suggest adding an explicit copyright statement for the project, at least to the README. Years ago, I used to contribute to the Debian project, and one of the things that slowed down the process was the lack of explicit copyright statements. I imagine that some companies considering use of this project (especially larger companies that have a lower appetite for risk) would require this as well.

From what I understand about the relevant law here (as a casual observer) is that ownership of copyright is required to declare a license. In countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention, you (as the author) already own copyright on your work unless stated otherwise.

An explicit copyright statement is therefore unnecessary from a legal point of view, but can save time (since the other option is to go through git log history and do other sorts of investigation, which is time consuming and therefore costly).

I'm not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal advice.

The net of this is that adding a copyright statement should improve adoption of your plugin and make your license clearer. There is even a sample header that can be copied into your source files in the Apache 2.0 License text (see the bottom of the file).

I'd be happy to send you a pull request for this change; let me know if that is your preference, as I will need to get permission from my employer to contribute first.

Cheers,

Jonathan

[jawnsy]

This looks to be a good reference on the topic: https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2012/ManagingCopyrightInformation.html

[srs]

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate any pull request for adding the headers and any other things to make the license clearer. It's intended that the plugin should be Apache 2.0 license (as you already know).