[MNG-7734] Default configuration file (settings.xml) contains copyright notice

[jira-importer]

Philippe Cloutier opened MNG-7734 and commented

The default contents of Maven's settings.xml configuration file start with the following comment:

<!-- 
Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
distributed with this work for additional information
regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
software distributed under the License is distributed on an
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
specific language governing permissions and limitations
under the License.
 -->

As a result, my organization has settings.xml files which start with that copyright notice. This is confusing and distracting, making an already long file even longer. A casual look makes it seem as if that file is unmodified source, while it is in fact a configuration file.

It is true that the file contains sizable test comments which must be subject copyright, so the notice is correct and has some value. However, its prominence (length and position, before even the file's description) increases the risk of confusion.

Since copyright notices are not necessary to copyright protection, since the Apache License is permissive and since the value of copyrights on that file are limited, I recommend to remove that notice from settings.xml.

---

Affects: 3.9.0

[jira-importer]

Tamas Cservenak commented

This file is part of distribution, and ASL2 applies. If user copies this file (with intent to modify it) the header can be removed as well.

Hence, if this is about the settings.xml included in distro, then header is expected (and AFAIK requirement) to be present (even simple logger properties has it).

If this is about user files, when the file is copied by user, it should be modified as well, and header can be removed.

[jira-importer]

Michael Osipov commented

I don't think that this file requies a header since it does lack any creativity. Look here I would expect no header to be present as well.

[Chealer]

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