Apache license and godoc

Is there a way to apply the Apache license properly without it appearing in godoc?

Apache requires boilerplate to appear at the top of every single source code file (which I hate, but whatever), something like this:

//   Copyright {yyyy} {name of copyright owner}
//
//   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.

What’s a good way to do this without having it clutter the godoc?

Invent your own license, let’s say Mattache license 1.0, based on Apache 2.0, which doesn’t require that and that’s it.

Make sure there is a blank line between the copyright blob and the package declaration.

Self promotional blog post

4 Likes

If you desire people working for other organizations to use your libraries easily, be careful about creating one-off licenses. In many organizations the legal teams will restrict their developers to using open-source components licensed under a specific set of licenses and if you create a “special license” that even has just a subtle and well-intentioned change, it may require an exception from the legal team to use it.

1 Like

Having worked for one of “those” organisations, I cannot recommend Bill’s advice highly enough.

The goal of an in house legal department is to protect their employer from risk, and saying no to something new is a very easy way to reduce risk. Don’t make it harder for organisations by writing your own version of GNU/Snowflake-2.0. It’s not worth the cost of being slightly different.

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.