Copyright Notices

This document clarifies our rules regarding copyright notices.

The general rule is as follow: every source file and textual data file that we publish must include a copyright notice covering the time period from the year of creation of the file to the current year.

The copyright notice must always have the form

// Copyright (c) YYYY <Author>, The appleseedhq Organization

for files created during the year, or

// Copyright (c) XXXX-YYYY <Author>, The appleseedhq Organization

for files created in a past year.

There are always two copyright holders: <Author> and The appleseedhq Organization. The comma between <Author> and The appleseedhq Organization is a "and", not a "from".

There is a special case to this rule for pre-2014 files: the developing organization switched from "Jupiter Jazz Limited" to "The appleseedhq Organization" in January 2014. Pre-2014 files must retain the original copyright notice and add the new one, so those files end up with two successive notices:

// Copyright (c) XXXX-2013 <Author>, Jupiter Jazz Limited
// Copyright (c) 2014-YYYY <Author>, The appleseedhq Organization

The last point concerns <Author>: it is the full name of the initial author of the file. If the entire content of the entire file is replaced (which can also happen through successive move/rename file operations), it is possible to replace <Author> by the name of the actual author of the new content. There is no hard rules here, fairplay is de rigueur.