Copyright preambles in the sources

["Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" <aek@vib.usr.pu.ru>]

Here was plenty of talk about the copyright issues from the user's viewpoint,
but just now I faced a copyright issue as a developer, and need an advice or
some explanation.
  I constantly see in various sources a "copyright preamble". Although I fully
respect the author's rights to put any comments into the sources, I deeply
distaste those "copyright preambles" inside each source file. Therefore I wish
to avoid such a practice in my own sources. But being substantially foreing
to the whole Copyright/Patent/Intellectual_Property world (because of Soviet
background), I don't understand why those preambles are so widespreading.
why they appear even in the obviously non-commercial packages. And I fear to
violate a rule when I don't feel the reason for it -;) .
  So, why you, independent non-commercial developers, put the "copyright
preambles" at the beginning of each file of the distributions? Is it a necessary
thing? What dangers I invite if I do not include that preambles in each source
file, but simply include a separate "copyright notice" file into the distribution?


Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia