Re: [PATCH RFC] Update/correct copyright notices

Eli Zaretskii
2001-02-28T03:18:00Z

On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Kevin Buettner wrote:

> The changes below were automatically generated. See
>
> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb/2001-02/msg00429.html
>
> for additional information regarding this patch.

I think the following change for go32-nat.c (and probably for many other
files) is not right:

diff -upr gdb.orig/go32-nat.c gdb/go32-nat.c
--- gdb.orig/go32-nat.c Tue Feb 20 12:31:27 2001
+++ gdb/go32-nat.c Wed Feb 28 01:17:14 2001
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
/* Native debugging support for Intel x86 running DJGPP.
- Copyright 1997, 1999, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+ Copyright 1992, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

go32-nat.c was not part of any GDB distribution is year 2001, so I don't
think we need, or even should, copyright it for this year yet. What if
the go32-nat.c changes checked into the GDB CVS until now will be
reverted at a later date, before any release is ever made?

(I'm quite sure I saw some message from Richard Stallman which said only
released versions need to be copyrighted, but I cannot find it in the
references I kept. So maybe I was dreaming.)

In any case, I suggest that Kevin's script's effect be limited to past
years. Adjusting the copyright notice is the responsibility of the
file's maintainers, so it isn't right IMHO for a script to interfere
like that with files I'm working on while I work on them. The script's
use should IMHO be limited to fixing past blunders, or files for which we
don't have active maintainers. Perhaps it should just send email to
the responsible persons where it detects anomalies in copyright notices,
but not actually change anything.