Fix the repository-wide copyright misattributions

[marceline-cramer]

So up until now, we've been copyrighting the Hearth codebase under "the Hearth contributors." However, this isn't sufficient for reasons I can't quite remember that @emmatebibyte may be able to help explain. Instead, we want to copyright each individual source file under each author's name individually.

I think that the most efficient way to make this change would be to write a script that goes through each file in the codebase and uses git blame and some sed magic to update the copyrights in each file. We'll then need to update CONTRIBUTORS.md to instruct people to add their copyrights to files that they've modified. When people make pull requests to Hearth, we'll also need to make sure that they do in fact add their copyrights.

I think that this can all be done in one fell swoop, so one PR should get the job done.

[emmatebibyte]

So up until now, we've been copyrighting the Hearth codebase under "the Hearth contributors." However, this isn't sufficient for reasons I can't quite remember that @emmatebibyte may be able to help explain. Instead, we want to copyright each individual source file under each author's name individually.

I meant to respond to this publicly earlier. There are a few reasons you’ll want to have individual copyright in source files:

• Ability to track the project down. If someone has a source file from the project, but not a CONTRIBUTORS file or any other information on the copyright, they don’t know how to get in touch.
• Ability to easily track contributions to files. You get explicit notice of who modified a file and a general ballpark of when they did so. This makes it easier for if licenses change or if parts of the file are found to be under a different license than they were contributed under.
• Copyright assignment is annoying. It’s a legal process and while the Hearth Contributors could be a valid organization to assign copyright to, the copyright only belongs to it if this has been agreed to in some legal fashion, like with a CLA. It’s just simpler and more painless to deal with individual copyright.

[emmatebibyte]

I’ve been working on this. What should the copyright attributions be for everyone?

[marceline-cramer]

Marceline Cramer <cramermarceline@gmail.com> is great, thank you.

[marceline-cramer]

We also need to update the years from 2023 to 2023-2024.

[emmatebibyte]

We should only do that for the files that have been worked on in 2024 :)

…

On January 22, 2024 11:34:54 PM UTC, Marceline Cramer ***@***.***> wrote: We also need to update the years from `2023` to `2023-2024`.