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Dave Wallace edited this page Apr 11, 2026 · 1 revision

Copyright and license headers in source code files

Please make sure all source code files contain a correct header of the form:


/*
 * Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holder>.
 *
 * Licensed 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.
 */

Where you substitute the year and copyright holder. You can see an example in the code at the top of the file here | here. (Note: Please make sure to use the correct copyright holder rather than copying verbatim the example ;) ).

Please note: when subsequent contributors make substantive changes to a file they may also optionally add a copyright header for themselves, but should preserve existing copyright statements and the license.

Example:


/*
 * Copyright (c) 1970 Yoyodyne.
 * Copyright (c) 2013 John Smith
 *
 * Licensed 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.
 */

Debranding code

Try to root out references to particular companies, trademarks, or brands in the code. Note, this does not apply to normal copyright headers referencing a company as the copyright holder. Note, this also does not apply to functional references to brands (ie, driver for Yoyodyne NIC, etc).

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