Copyright years

[Tim Allclair]

(I'm not sure who the right group is to ask this - feel free to redirect)

In a lot of PRs I review, there is a new file that copied the header from some other file, and therefore has an older year in the copyright header. I'm never sure if I should nit-pick changing the year, or just leave it.

Does the copyright year matter? If it doesn't matter, can we just remove it? If it does, we should probably enforce correctness automatically. FWIW, here's a discussion of the decision to remove it from curl: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/01/08/copyright-without-years/, but IANAL.

BTW, we already have a lot of files that omit the year: https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=repo:%5Egithub%5C.com/kubernetes/kubernetes%24+%22Copyright+The+Kubernetes+Authors%22&patternType=keyword&sm=0

[Jordan Liggitt]

It looks like https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/copyright-notices.md#copyright-notices recommends formats that exclude years, and explicitly calls that out as a benefit (emphasis mine):

"By using a common format, the project avoids having to deal with names of copyright holders, years or ranges of years, and variations on the (c) symbol. This aims to minimize the burden on developers and maintainers as well as redistributors of the code."

I'd +1 dropping the years from our copyright headers.

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[Tim Hockin]

I'd be +1 on dropping YEAR, too.

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[Jordan Liggitt]

+kubernetes-sig-architecture for visibility and feedback (since sig-arch / code-organization folks would probably be the ones actuating any change to boilerplate / verification scripts, etc)

[Stephen Augustus]

+1 for dropping the year (and agreed that this likely falls under the remit of SIG Arch / Code organization).

Call-out to our friend repo-infra (https://github.com/kubernetes/repo-infra), which has some copyright-related generators.

It's currently a Release Engineering subproject (as it predated Code Org).

We should discuss transferring or turning it down.

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[Tim Allclair]

There's a practical benefit to removing it, with a lot of support, but who would be the approver on this? I assume we need a lawyer to sign off on it? Is there a standard protocol for this type of decision?

[Jordan Liggitt]

We didn't ask for permission when we dropped year from generated files in https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/59172 and things turned out fine.

Given we already have hundreds of code files without the year, and we'd conform more closely to CNCF recommended guidelines, I would assume we don't require a lawyer to ack switching the rest to match.

If we ended up doing this, I'd probably 1) broadcast the intent to mailing lists including dev@, 2) give time for any objections/concerns and resolve this, 3) prep / merge over a weekend with a top-level arch/api approver queued up to minimize rebase churn

[Bob Killen]

If we're going to be updating the boilerplate, it might be a good time to switch over to a series LLC and consolidate boilerplate updates.
All new projects coming in are under it, and the CNCF has been slowly rolling through the projects in batches to move them over.
Adding +Daniel Krook to the thread who can provide more information on it.

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[John Belamaric]

SGTM

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[Stephen Augustus]

[I am not a lawyer], but just to note for clarity...

We do not have to retroactively change headers and existing ones should stay in place.

So, roughly:

- decide on a new canonical header

- broadcast intent

- update any scripts handling enforcement

- instruct folks to update PRs with net-new files

On Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 15:36 Joe Betz <jpb...@google.com> wrote:

+1

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[Joe Betz]

+1

On Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 3:35 PM 'John Belamaric' via kubernetes-sig-architecture <kubernetes-si...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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[Daniel Krook]

Thanks for looping me in, Bob.

That's correct, as CNCF projects are converted to separate legal entities (isolating them from each other, rather than all sharing a single legal namespace) they'll need updates to their copyright lines and website footers to reflect that.

I am working on clear instructions for this with LF Legal (for example, how exactly this should replace/enhance/add to the existing copyright lines) that we can share with SIG Arch and others soon.

As a preview, this is what the updated strings will eventually look like (no change needed yet):

For code/docs:

> Copyright © contributors to Kubernetes, established as Kubernetes a Series of LF Projects, LLC.

For website footers:
> Copyright © Kubernetes a Series of LF Projects, LLC
> For website terms of use, trademark policy and other project policies please see lfprojects.org/policies/.

--

Daniel Krook

Senior Director of Developer Experience

Cloud Native Computing Foundation - cncf.io

[Tim Allclair]

Thanks for the information Daniel. Based on what you shared, it looks like we should hold off on making any changes around dropping the copyright year, and just wait for the larger boilerplate update? Do you have an estimate for when those changes might be ready?

[Daniel Krook]

Hi Tim,

Apologies for the delay.

LF legal did give us some guidance this week and Bob and I discussed how the change might work with the templates, generators, and verifiers.

I should have the guidance to share by the end of next week so I would hold off on the changes till at least then.

[Daniel Krook]

Hi folks,

I've gotten guidance back from LF Legal and discussed this with Bob.

Their guidance is not to modify existing copyright lines in existing files, but to start using the new line for all new file contributions.

This is because attribution notices shouldn't be removed or replaced, rather just added to, without a very specific and legal reviewed reason.

That would mean all the template repos used for new efforts within the Kubernetes GitHub org should use a new "Copyright © contributors to Kubernetes a Series of LF Projects, LLC." line.

Automation scripts (generators and verifiers) should be updated to look for the existing format or the new one: "Copyright © contributors to Kubernetes a Series of LF Projects, LLC."

For the kubernetes.io website footer, it should be updated to read:

    Copyright © Kubernetes a Series of LF Projects, LLC
    For website terms of use, trademark policy and other project policies please see lfprojects.org/policies/.

    Documentation Distributed under CC BY 4.0.

    ICP license: 京ICP备17074266号-3

For tracking, should we open up an issue in the community or infra repos?

[Sean McGinnis]

Hey - non-lawyers interjecting here to question the lawyers, but...

One of the Linux Foundation training modules on open source licensing actually calls out this as being incorrect: "Copyright ©"

That's essentially saying "copyright copyright". Is that actually what we want? Just thought I should point that out before any new official guidance goes out, just in case that is an oversight.

Sean

[Benjamin Elder]

I think we should file a tracking issue somewhere, perhaps kubernetes/steering and we can delegate out to the subprojects / raise to more visible lists like d...@kubernetes.io

Apologies, this thread was in my spam box (!)

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