Removing @author tags

[jdaugherty]

Issue description

Per Weekly 12/17/2025 meeting, we have agreed to remove @author tags from the source code where it's not public domain.

As part of this removal, we need to verify the author exists in the mailmap where appropriate or we need to leave the author tags for that file as it's likely been imported as part of the original Grails code

[sanjana2505006]

Hello @jdaugherty,
I’m interested in contributing to this issue. Before I start, I want to make sure I’m aligned with the expected approach.

Could you please clarify what the preferred first step is here? For example, should contributors start by identifying files with @author tags and checking whether the author exists in the mailmap, or is there a specific subset of files you’d like addressed first?

[jdaugherty]

Hi @sanjana2505006 I'd suggest you hold off on this ticket. One of the risks with mass removing @author is we'll no longer attribute someone who should be in the pom. We initially assembled the pom developers based on the git history - but Grails is old enough that it hasn't always been on GitHub. From our research, we know that some authors paired or some code was copied from spring during the time that Grails was at pivotal. We want to make sure @author tags remain for any file where the person is not in the mailmap. Any time this comes up, we also need to discuss to make sure a mistake hasn't been made. Moreover, we can't mass remove these on any non-asf licensed code (i.e. the json public domain code). @matrei / myself had talked about taking this on for this reason.

[sanjana2505006]

Thank you for the detailed explanation
That makes sense. I appreciate you clarifying the risks around attribution and licensing here.
I’ll hold off on this ticket as suggested. Please feel free to tag me if there’s a smaller or more clearly scoped task where help would be useful. I’d be happy to contribute.