[rozab]

Lawyers exist to get paid. We all know, for instance, that copyright notices in source code are pointless (and I mean like an extensive message in every single file) but it's more important for a lawyer to cover their ass from any possibly liability than to make the company more efficient. And of course, it creates work for them.

[dctoedt]

> copyright notices in source code are pointless

That's true for copyright notices in comments that get stripped out in compilation where the source itself isn't released. But a copyright notice in a no-op variable, or otherwise embedded in the distributed code, can help win a lawsuit by directly proving copying (which can sometimes be a nontrivial effort).

Text in distributed executables helped win a case for Apple back in the 1980s: "James Huston, an Apple systems programmer, concluded that the Franklin programs were 'unquestionably copied from Apple and could not have been independently created.' He reached this conclusion not only because it is 'almost impossible for so many lines of code' to be identically written, but also because his name, which he had embedded in one program (Master Create), and the word 'Applesoft', which was embedded in another (DOS 3.3), appeared on the Franklin master disk." Apple Computer Corp. v. Franklin Computer Corp., 714 F.2d 1240, 1245 (3d Cir. 1983) (Emphasis added.)

Case text: https://casetext.com/case/apple-computer-inc-v-franklin-comp...

[gizmo686]

Work for the lawers? In my experience, it creates work for the developers, who maintain the automated license checks; rejects changes missing the nessasarry copyright; deal with files that cannot have a copyright notice for technical reasons; notice when they want to merge in a file with an incomopatable copyright.

[Rebelgecko]

My understanding is that registering with the copyright office and adding the goofy footer makes it much easier to sue for statutory damages, which can lead to a payout several orders of magnitude bigger than a lawsuit for "actual" damages

[klodolph]

I don’t think it’s pointless.

Someone copies a source file, maybe you can argue that it’s accidental. Someone copies a source file and strips out the copyright notice, that shows intent.

[brudgers]

It takes an argument by a lawyer in front of a trier if fact before stripping copyright from source files shows anything. Irrespective of details, the wherewithal to lawyer up is mostly what matters because “fuck you sue me” is a sound legal strategy in so many cases. Or to put it another way, unless you have a lawyer on retainer the odds of bring a ne’erdowell to heel are low and one on retainer is probably saying it’s not worth it if they’re worth their salt. YMMV