[cairo] COPYING files....

[Egbert Eich]

Sean Middleditch writes:
 > 
 > The advantages of a COPYING file are that users can easily read the
 > license without digging in source files, that files which do not allow

With MIT style licenses you may want to have a template file rather
than a COPYING file.

 > easy embedding of COPYING notices can still have a license file (i.e.,
 > if you have a lot of PNGs or something else, where you'd prefer not to
 > embed huge text chunks), and for larger licenses (GPL) you only need to
 > refer the user to the COPYING file in the copyright headers of files,
 > versus copy the whole thing into the sources.

What if somebody goes ahead and changes the COPYING file behind your back?

 > 
 > If the project has lots of different licenses in it, tho, the COPYING
 > file might not be the best idea, unless you include all the relevant
 > licenses.

Right. MIT-Style licenses are all very similar but customized (see below).

 > 
 > You don't need the copyright notice in the copying file; just the
 > license.  Put the individual copyrights in the files themselves.  That
 > way you don't need 100 contributors listed in your COPYING file.
 > 

Yes, but I mentioned that in the MIT-style license the license text
is often modified to hold the copyright holder's name. Please note
that I wasn't talking about the GPL.

Egbert.