Subject: Re: Dangling copyright in git hook template

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2022 11:49:28 -0800

Frederic Tessier <[email-masked]> writes:

> What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior)
> New repo initialized containing no copyright claims
>
> What happened instead? (Actual behavior)
> New repo initialized with a copyright claim in .git/hooks/pre-rebase.sample:
> # Copyright (c) 2006, 2008 Junio C Hamano

Because the sample files are copied verbatim, with or without such
copyright notice message, they are copyrighted by their respective
copyright holders.  And their modification and distribution should
follow the same licensing terms (i.e. GPLv2) as our source files.

Removing that single line would not change anything, as these days
the written copyright notice is optional across the globe.

We could probably stop shipping these .sample hook files, or the
users can ignore them with the same ease.

I dunno.  An alternative position on the other extreme is to find
and convince all the copyright holders of template/, relicense these
files under less restrictive license _and_ state the license clearly
in each of these files.  I think that ought to be our long term
direction.

Thanks for bringing this up.