Re: Standardized file headers?

How about a minimal filer header—something like


;;; Copyright Contributors to the Maxima project.
;;; See the file COPYING for license information.

A history lesson at the top of each file isn't all that helpful to developers, and the past quarter century of commit comments, including authors and dates, is accessible from any git-aware editor.


________________________________
From: Robert Dodier <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 10:42 PM
To: Raymond Toy <[email protected]>
Cc: Stavros Macrakis <[email protected]>; <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Maxima-discuss] Standardized file headers?

Caution: Non-NU Email


On Wed, Apr 22, 2026 at 5:18 PM Raymond Toy <[email protected]> wrote:

> I don’t find this appropriate for new code. Neither MIT, UT, nor William Schelter had anything to do with it. (Like Barton’s hypergeometric.lisp, I think.) Probably just remove those lines and leave the Maxima project line.

Agreed that we should avoid giving credit to anyone who didn't
actually work on the code.

About crediting the Maxima project, I think we should avoid that, as
it doesn't exist in a legal sense, so it can't be credited with
authorship. I think it's OK to be vague about who the authors are.
Something like "copyright 2000-2026 by the authors of this file."
Exactly who that is can be discovered in the commit log.

FWIW

Robert


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