Source files header

[sidihamady]

Authors can add a header to each source file specifying in particular the description, the authors (by adding an AUHTORS file and referring to it) and the type of license (by referring to the LICENSE file).
For example:

"""
DESCRIPTION.

This file is part of pySLM2 by AUTHORS, see AUTHORS for more details.
LICENSE TYPE, see LICENSE for more details.
"""

[brandondube]

This is neither necessary nor standard practice. (I am another of the JOSS reviewers). The "enterprise" purpose of such headers is to contain a record of the copyright and license in each file, so that if a single file is borrowed the intellectual property restriction travels with it. By making the doc header a reference to a separate file, one defeats the principal purpose.

[sidihamady]

@brandondube I disagree. This kind of headers is common and useful and referring to a standard license such as MIT, BSD or GPL make it unnecessary to copy the full content in each header. Then I maintain my recommendation.

[brandondube]

Again, it is not standard practice for python code to contain license headers.

[sidihamady]

@brandondube did you read and understand my recommandation? It is not the full licence text (of course!) but a few lines stating the type of license and pointing to the LICENSE file! Plus a line describing the purpose of the file. If you read my recommendation, you can see the example I gave with a small header with a few lines. And it is something common since many years. I can give you many examples of well known Python packages, some published in JOSS, with this kind of headers.