Joyent Copyright still in header of many files

[MylesBorins]

Joyent copyright is still present in some headers of files in tools, test, support, and lib

Is this intentional? I'll follow up with a quick PR to fix this

[cjihrig]

Those can probably go, but I'm not a lawyer. Also, see 3e1b1dd

[MylesBorins]

maybe @mikeal could chime in on what is proper

@isaacs was there a reason some files still maintain the copyright header?

[rvagg]

see also #527 / 767ee73 and /cc @bnoordhuis for further context

[MylesBorins]

So it would appear there are a handful of copyrights still active in the code base (not just dependencies). Owners of these include

• joyent
• @bnoordhuis
• @indutny
• strongloop (/cc @piscisaureus)

It would appear the joyent copyright is present in LICENSE, which seems to be a central place for keeping project licenses

There is also a stray license file in tools/doc --> https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/tools/doc/LICENSE

[indutny]

You have my written permission to remove any of my copyrights, just CC me in a Pull Request.

[mikeal]

We'll need a legal opinion on this prior to altering it. I can bring it to the next board meeting if the CTC requests it.

[Fishrock123]

Yes please.

[jasnell]

Getting an official legal position is good but in general, no existing copyright statement should be altered without the consent of the copyright holder or such alteration is acceptable within the terms of the license. For instance, when io.js originally removed the copyright statements from the individual files and into the main LICENSE file, that was ok because the terms of open source license were still being upheld.

[mikeal]

To re-iterate what @jasnell is saying: we can't do anything that materially changes or represents a material change of prior copyright assignment. If we changed this all to say "all prior code is owned by Mikeal Rogers" that would not actually assign anything to me, copyright law doesn't allow us to unilaterally re-assign someone else's copyright, and for compliance purposes we can't state something about the state of the copyright that is not accurate.

What do we want to change this text to?

[Fishrock123]

I think we just want to consolidate it.

[mikeal]

BTW, we may want to start using some compliance tools to figure out where we have gaps in the stated licenses http://www.fossology.org/projects/fossology

[MylesBorins]

exactly what @Fishrock123 said. Things seemed inconsistent to me, so I figured it would make sense to have everything living in one place

assuming that is allowed with the license