What should our standard copyright text header be?

[stephengtuggy]

What standard copyright notice should we use in our source files? I've been using the following, with slight variations from one file to the next in terms of the coauthors listed:

/*
 * <filename>
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2001-2025 Daniel Horn, pyramid3d, Stephen G. Tuggy,
 * Roy Falk, Benjamen R. Meyer, and other Vega Strike contributors.
 *
 * https://github.com/vegastrike/Vega-Strike-Engine-Source
 *
 * This file is part of Vega Strike.
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 Vega Strike. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

There is a proposal to use the following instead:

• Created by Daniel R. Horn.
• Original dev team...
• Current dev team...
• Copyright (c) 2001-2025 by the above developers

[BenjamenMeyer]

I think we have a script for applying the current one to the various files.
The current one is probably fine, though if we do change then we need the (c) <dates> first, then the list of authors like:

Copyright (C)2001-2025 Vega Strike Development Team consisting of:
Created by Daniel R. Horn
< original dev team>
< current dev team>
And other contributors
....

Pretty sure the date is required first for Copyright.J

Thoughts?

[stephengtuggy]

Sure, that looks good

[royfalk]

So I dug deeper:
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/copyright-notices-in-open-source-software-projects

1. It's a copyright notice
2. Date should be the initial date
3. We can list the created, original, current above and say as LSF recommends: "Copyright The XYZ Contributors."

[stephengtuggy]

I think the Copyright clause itself is supposed to be near the top, right?

From what I recall of the Free Software Foundation's guidelines, you were supposed to list every single contributor to each file, and every single separate year in which changes were made to it. Kind of a lot of work, if you ask me.

[stephengtuggy]

I like "Copyright [date range] The XYZ Contributors" much better, personally.

[stephengtuggy]

Then how about:

/*
 * <filename>
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2001-2025 The Vega Strike Contributors:
 * Daniel Horn, project creator
 * Original development team: ...
 * Current development team: Roy Falk, Benjamen R. Meyer, Stephen G. Tuggy
 * ...
 *
 * https://github.com/vegastrike/Vega-Strike-Engine-Source
 *
 * This file is part of Vega Strike.
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 Vega Strike. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

[stephengtuggy]

Yeah. In the past, we've always left out the Collision Detection files from this process. I guess we should still do that. Or else apply a different template, like you said.

I like to include Daniel Horn on everything -- at least, everything that originated with Vega Strike -- since he started the project. It sounds like we're not fully in agreement on that though.

[BenjamenMeyer]

I like to include Daniel Horn on everything -- at least, everything that originated with Vega Strike -- since he started the project. It sounds like we're not fully in agreement on that though.

that's okay with the exception of things that originated from outside Vega Strike. Those things need to maintain their own origin chain.

This will probably get easier to apply once we refactor some things and start breaking down libraries since then we can pull the collision detection stuff out into its own library (might be one of my first to do so).

[stephengtuggy]

What do you think of the following text for the copyright header for collision detection files?

/**
 * OPC_PlanesTriOverlap.h
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2001 Pierre Terdiman
 * Copyright (C) 2021, 2022, 2025 Stephen G. Tuggy
 * Copyright (C) 2023 Benjamen R. Meyer
 *
 * This file is part of OPCODE - Optimized Collision Detection
 * (http://www.codercorner.com/Opcode.htm) and has been
 * incorporated into Vega Strike
 * (https://github.com/vegastrike/Vega-Strike-Engine-Source).
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 Vega Strike.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

[BenjamenMeyer]

How about something like:

/**
 * OPC_PlanesTriOverlap.h
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2001 Pierre Terdiman
 * Copyright (C) 2021, 2022, 2025 Stephen G. Tuggy
 * Copyright (C) 2023 Benjamen R. Meyer
 *
 * This file is part of OPCODE - Optimized Collision Detection
 * (http://www.codercorner.com/Opcode.htm) and has been
 * incorporated into Vega Strike
 * (https://github.com/vegastrike/Vega-Strike-Engine-Source).
 * 
 * OPCODE is free to use and incorporate in any software; see
 * http://www.codercorner.com/Opcode.htm) for details.
 * Changes made for Vega Strike fall under the following license:
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * Vega Strike 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 Vega Strike.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

We could probably do our standard header after the following license line.

[stephengtuggy]

Looks good to me!