Use the copyright holder in check

[Ana06]

I would like to use addlicense as linter in projects like capa and FLARE-VM to ensure all files have a header with Google LLC as copyright holder with addlicense -c "Google LLC" --check .. But at the moment it seems addlicense ignores the -c argument if the -check argument is provided. I would like that if both arguments are provided, it checks not only that there is a header, but also that the copyright holder is correct.

[flwyd]

I understand the desire for this feature, but I suspect that it's somewhat complicated in practice. For example, a lot of Google code has "Copyright 20xx Google Inc.", only changing to "Copyright 20xx Google LLC" after the Alphabet reorganization. Additionally, some projects may have files contributed from a variety of different copyright holders, whether as joint contributors to a project or just a file with a compatible license copied from one project to another.

Can you say more about what behavior you would expect with this feature, and how it should handle heterogenous licensing situations?

[Ana06]

I expect addlicense -c "Google LLC" --check . to fail if any header uses a different copyright holder than Google LLC. In the case of FLARE-VM, all the copyright headers are Google LLC.

But I see the issue with projects with several copyright holders. Another option would be to support a list of copyright holders with the check argument. This way all project could use this future to implement a linter.