No copyright information is found

[stefan-hdt]

When looking at this project there was no copyright information found, only a hint to the developer Tatu Solaranta. Is it correct then that this project may be used without any copyright holder attribution?

[cowtowncoder]

I believe you are correct: as long as the LICENSE (Apache License 2.0) is followed you are good to go. I do not think licensing terms require disclosing of the author.

If you decide to include author information the only note I would make is that the last name is "Saloranta" (o<->a). :-)
I think I better add something in there to add this information for anyone interested.

[stefan-hdt]

Thanks for your reply. And sorry for mispelling your last name. :-) I'll do better next time.

Just to give you some background information of me: I am a lawyer specialized in Open Source Software Licensing and want to make sure that each copyright holder is acknowledged accordingly. Sometimes, it is really hard for a licensee to comply with the license obligations, especially when it comes to the copyright information. E.g., the Apache-2.0 license text has a special place holder for the licensor and copyright holder to put in his name. Unfortunately, this information is missing regularly in a lot of OSS projects.

[cowtowncoder]

@stefan-hdt Thank you for this background information.

One quick question: since it is convenient to either copy-paste or link to the unmodified license version, is there some commonly used alternate (to modifying license) inclusion mechanism to include copyright information? COPYRIGHT file at root of repo?
I am not a fan of including such information in source code comments (more things to manage) so I assume some common practices must have emerged within Github OSS community... but I am not sure what those would be.

[vlsi]

I know Apache Software Foundation uses a generic copyright notice in file headers (like in log4j: https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/blob/ffa6d94a2d48637cbee9832d5fccf3549435921f/log4j-core/src/main/java/org/apache/logging/log4j/core/Filter.java#L2-L6 )

Then there's a small NOTICE file in the repository root: https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/blob/ffa6d94a2d48637cbee9832d5fccf3549435921f/NOTICE.txt

That simplifies maintenance as all the files have constant headers.

[stefan-hdt]

@cowtowncoder I understand that using the unmodified license template is very convenient for programmers. And, of course, putting copyright and license information in each source code file becomes a problem when changes have to be done. On the other hand, licensees want to know the legal copyright situation of a component. Uncertanties about that are a real problem.

So, having one central file, e.g. NOTICE file for Apache-2.0 projects [leads to license obligation to distribute the content of such file] or COPYRIGHT file, would make it easier for both parties. Such files should contain a main copyright holder - if there is such - and a main license. Parts from different copyrigth holders and/or licensed under different licenses should be mentioned thereafter.

The project [...] is Copyright (c) 2020 Jon Doe and licensed under the Apache-2.0 license (https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0). Some parts have different copyright holders and/or licenses (see below).

All files in the directory /project/docs are licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0
Files in the directory /project/third-party/abc are Copyright (c) 2020 Who Ever and licensed under the BSD-3-Clause

@vlsi You are right. The Apache Software Foundations provides a copyright template that might we filled out as part of the license text file or copied in some or all source code files:

Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

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.

The NOTICE file - as mentioned above - is a possible way to provide copyright and license information. According to Section 4d, the content of such file has to be distributed together with the software.

[cowtowncoder]

NOTICE is now included in built jar, containing:

## Copyright

Copyright 2007-, Tatu Saloranta (tatu.saloranta@iki.fi)

Closing.