[BioRuby] Removing copyright statements from BioRuby sources

[Pjotr Prins]

A few weeks ago all BioRuby panel members were together in Japan. We
used this time to discuss the future of BioRuby, and we took some
decisions. 

An important decision was to remove all personal copyright statements
from the BioRuby source code, and replace it with a single copyright
by the BioRuby project, before the next BioRuby release. The reason is
that commits are all stored in version control.  Copyright statements
do not always reflect the work that has gone into a file: some people
contribute a lot, others much less, and shared copyright statements do
not reflect the work gone in. The commit history, however, does
reflect history, and acts like a copyright, subject to the LICENSE
that goes with BioRuby. So, the removal of copyright statements does
not mean the loss of "your" copyright written by "you".

If any existing copyright holders take issue with this decision, we
will study the implications of either removing the submitted code,
move the code out to a biogem, or retaining the copyright for special
cases. We invite all copyright holders to send complaints to us now.
If no complaint is received before November 1st, 2012, we'll assume
the copyright holder to agree.

Naohisa, Pjotr, Raoul, Francesco and Toshiaki