Ensuring commit messages with correct copyright info

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

The thing that comes up, again and again, as the main reason we should
be able to edit commit messages (and therefore we should have
ChangeLogs, because we can edit those) is that we (er, mainly me :-))
sometimes forget to put

Copyright-paperwork-exempt: yes

into the commit messages.

So why not concentrate of fixing that particular problem?  I think
something that might help is that if the committer is different from the
author, then there should always be something in the commit message that
explicitly says what the copyright status of the work is.

That is, unless the line

Copyright-paperwork-exempt: yes

or the line

Copyright-assigned: yes

is present in the commit message, then the commit... hooks? (the thing
that refuses to check in files with trailing newlines etc; I don't know
the details about how that works) should refuse the commit.

Then it should be pretty impossible to forget this stuff, and there's
one less reason to want to edit the commit messages.

(Note: This hook should only be run if there's an Author: header in the
vc log buffer.  Everybody who has commit rights have already assigned
copyright, so it's unnecessary to add those if the committer and the
author are the same person.)

(Copyright-disclaimed: yes should also be a possible value, I guess.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no