Re: author names in .c files

[Karl Berry]

    First, adding author names to files suggests that there is some
    ownership, in copyright terms, 

No, I have to strongly disagree here.  The copyright lines (not to
mention actual signed papers) are what count, not random commentary
lines.

    new contributors tend to leave the existing author lines alone,

Yes, I've observed that as well, though it doesn't seem like a problem
per se to me.

As far as GNU conventions go, if people want to have comments that say
"Original author Foo Bar", that's fine -- it's fairly traditional to do
so in GNU packages, and it can be helpful on occasion, as Jim and Bruno
pointed out.  But if people don't want to have such comments, that's
fine too.  This is not a situation that has to have one right answer.

karl