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[aspectj-dev] copyrights

We have to decide what copyrights should be on source file headers
as we update them.  Currently, they look like this:

------
 Copyright (c) 2001-2001 Xerox Corporation, 
               2002 Palo Alto Research Center, Incorporated (PARC).
 All rights reserved. 
 ...{license}...

 Contributors: 
     Xerox/PARC     initial implementation 

------

I assume that developers should update them when we make changes (yuck!).
It seems awkward to put individual names in copyrights.  Shall we use
"contributors" and let the dates of particular contributions
supply any needed context?  I think that makes it easiest to manage
for developers. It's a small scriptable change that merges nicely in CVS.  

Following is an example of what I recommend:

------
 Copyright (c) 2001-2001 Xerox Corporation, 
               2002 Palo Alto Research Center, Incorporated (PARC),
               2003-2004 Contributors.
 All rights reserved. 
 ...{license}...

 Contributors: 
     Xerox/PARC     initial implementation 
     Jim Hugunin    2003 updates
     Erik Hilsdale  2003 updates
     Marcus Welby   2004 updates

------

(By contrast, most eclipse sources say s.t. like

  Copyright (c) 2002 IBM Corporation and others

which doesn't provide any notice of who "others" is.)

If committers agree, I'll add a comment to 

  build/readme-build-module.html

if not a script to check for updated files and add
the notice if necessary.

Wes

P.S. btw, this affects the code for license scanning tests.
It would be easy to scan for "2003... Contributors", but not
for individual names.  Currently, there is no tests failing even
though some copyrights are out of date.


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