Apache 2 short version

[codingjoe]

Hi there,

I think it's kind of odd, to add the entire Apache 2 license to your work. Especially since the license defines a way how that should be done in the appendix.

Following the instruction the only thing that should be added is:

  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.

Sadly, this isn't even recognized by Github within the license detection. I would really like to see that change in the future. I believe this is the wrong repo though. Anyhow, I would be a start to change it here, wouldn't it?

[mlinksva]

Read the appendix and notice you quoted carefully, in particular "this file". The notice is for including in source files.

If you don't believe me, look at what Apache Foundation projects do, eg:

• https://github.com/apache/httpd/blob/trunk/LICENSE (the full license text)
• https://github.com/apache/httpd/blob/trunk/server/apreq_cookie.c (the notice text in a comment)

[codingjoe]

@mlinksva I do believe you, don't worry ;)
It's just very bewildering that one would need to include it into every file. It's just a lot of work :/
Thanks for the clarification 👍

[mlinksva]

@codingjoe only some projects mandate per-file notice; see http://lu.is/blog/2012/03/17/on-the-importance-of-per-file-license-information/ for example rationale. Per file notice has probably declined with relatively granular packages as expected unit of code reuse, but I don't know of any study on this. A related newer idea is to include SPDX ID (or license expression if more complicated) in each file, see https://lwn.net/Articles/739183/

In any case these various practices are why choosealicense.com includes a note about boilerplate notices alongside licenses with recommended per-file notices like at https://choosealicense.com/licenses/apache-2.0/