Author has inserted copyright into code with gnu public license notice - implications?
- by Nicholas Pickering
I've found a project on Github that I'm interested in contributing to which claims to be open source and has a GPL license included with it.
But the original author has added a copyright notification to each source file. I'm not sure why but I don't feel right contributing to a project that's always going to have someone else's name on it. It really breaks the community-created feel, and makes me uneasy about what the author might choose to do with the project next.
What are the implications of copyrighting open source GPL code as so? What power does this give the original author over a contributor?
# Copyright (C) 2012, 2013 __AUTHORNAME__
# This file is part of __PROJECTNAME__.
#
# __PROJECTNAME__ is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# __PROJECTNAME__ is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
