Re: [ECOS] Re: eCosCentric copyright hold in headers

[Andrew Lunn <andrew at lunn dot ch>]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 03:54:26PM +0100, Jonathan Larmour wrote:
> Andrew Lunn wrote:
> >Should we propose what the new banner looks like?
> >
> >Is the basic format of the current banner  OK?
> 
> I'd like it to be changed actually. Some of the information parts of the 
> banner are _very_ frequently poorly maintained and/or inaccurate and do us 
> a disservice. I think the Authors/Contributors bits are ambiguous; and the 
> Purpose/Description ditto. It's never really been clear what Date the Date 
> is for. I think I fill these in more than most people, but still rarely. 
> Contributions very frequently have inaccurate fields here, most annoyingly 
> the author.
> 
> I think something like the following fields would be better/clearer:
> 
> Maintained by: <person responsible for _this_ file, irrespective of what it 
> was derived from>
> 
> Contributors: <anyone else who's worked on it and wants a mention>
> Derived from: <what file/package it was derived from if relevant
> Description:
> 
> I propose dropping the date entirely partly due to the ambiguity and partly 
> because it doesn't tell us anything we can't find out more accurately from 
> the changelogs.
> 
> I propose dropping the mini-description underneath the filename at the top, 
> as it is usually no better than the description further down.

Just to make that a bit more concrete i've made an example. 

//==========================================================================
//
//      common/kapi.cxx
//
//==========================================================================
//####ECOSGPLCOPYRIGHTBEGIN####
// -------------------------------------------
// This file is part of eCos, the Embedded Configurable Operating System.
// Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
//
// eCos is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
// the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
// Software Foundation; either version 2 or (at your option) any later version.
//
// eCos is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
// WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
// FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
// for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
// with eCos; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
// 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.
//
// As a special exception, if other files instantiate templates or use macros
// or inline functions from this file, or you compile this file and link it
// with other works to produce a work based on this file, this file does not
// by itself cause the resulting work to be covered by the GNU General Public
// License. However the source code for this file must still be made available
// in accordance with section (3) of the GNU General Public License.
//
// This exception does not invalidate any other reasons why a work based on
// this file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.
//
// -------------------------------------------
//####ECOSGPLCOPYRIGHTEND####
//==========================================================================
//#####DESCRIPTIONBEGIN####
//
// Maintained by:   nickg, dsm
// Contributors:        nickg
// Derived from: 
// Description: C++ implementation of the C API
//
//####DESCRIPTIONEND####
//
//==========================================================================

I don't think this is going to be easy. Does dsm maintain this file?

     Andrew