[Libreoffice] Template for copyright headers is cumbersome (was Re: How to call from one component to another (sw->starmath))

[Lubos Lunak]

On Tuesday 16 of August 2011, Michael Meeks wrote:
> Hi Lubos,
>
> On Tue, 2011-08-16 at 12:09 +0200, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> >  No, starmath doesn't need to call back to writer. The problem is that
> > this is still needlessly complicated. How about the attached patch?
>
> 	I like it's simplicity personally :-) though of course we should use
> core/TEMPLATE.SOURCECODE.HEADER in new files

 I simply copy&pasted from other file, I didn't notice we have this. I'll fix.

 However, I can't help noticing that the template layout is ... er, not 
suitable for easy use:

- Since by the time a file is created there is usually only the initial 
developer, there are not major contributors. The major contributors section, 
as it is worded, cannot be left in with an empty list, so it needs to be 
removed. Whoever becomes a major contributor later has to re-add the section.

- Besides the above problem, the "Portions created by the Ted are Copyright 
(C) 2010 Ted. All Rights Reserved." section makes it likely to overlook that 
a number of our new files will be copyrighted by Ted, whoever that is.

- Similarly, the 2010 is quite well hidden in there and unlikely to make it to 
2011 or beyond :).

 I don't know who's responsible for the template, but can it be made more 
simple to use? Preferably so that adding a new contributor is just adding one 
line, and updating the year is done in one visible place? Either the 
copyright header matters, and in that case it shouldn't be made easy for 
developers to mess it up, or the copyright header doesn't really matter much, 
and then changes making it easy to fill it in don't really matter much 
either.

-- 
 Lubos Lunak
 l.lunak at suse.cz