FYI: copyright years updated...

FYI: copyright years updated...

[Joel Brobecker]

Hello,

The final part of the Start of New Year Procedure, consisting
in running coypright.py, has been done, and the result has been
checked in (it took 34mins!).

One element worth mentioning is the fact that copyright years
have now all been collapsed to a single range, regardless of
"holes" (approved by the FSF, case [gnu.org #719834]). For
instance:

    -   Copyright (C) 1996, 1998-2001, 2007-2012 Free Software Foundation,
    -   Inc.
    +   Copyright (C) 1996-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Even compressed, the patch still weighs more than 100KB, so
I decided not to send it. You should soon be able to either
use the git mirror to get it, or send me a private request,
and I will send you a copy.

-- 
Joel

Re: FYI: copyright years updated...

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com> writes:

> The final part of the Start of New Year Procedure, consisting
> in running coypright.py, has been done, and the result has been
> checked in (it took 34mins!).
> [...]

What would happen if we post-date these copyright year numbers to
some long-in-the-future year, so this chore goes away?  

- FChE

Re: FYI: copyright years updated...

[Joel Brobecker]

> What would happen if we post-date these copyright year numbers to
> some long-in-the-future year, so this chore goes away?

clever idea :-). But unfortunately, we need to verify that
legally significant changes have been made in order to claim
copyright for a given year. And, on the practical side of things,
we regularly add new files, and those files would need to be
updated at some point.

-- 
Joel

Re: FYI: copyright years updated...

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

> clever idea :-). But unfortunately, we need to verify that legally
> significant changes have been made in order to claim copyright for a
> given year. [...]

How come people are committing copyright year-2013 updates at the
*beginning* of the year - before any changes have been made?

- FChE

Re: FYI: copyright years updated...

[Joel Brobecker]

> How come people are committing copyright year-2013 updates at the
> *beginning* of the year - before any changes have been made?

I am not a lawyer, and just follow the recommendation from the FSF
as I understand it (documented in "Information for Maintainers
of GNU Software). I don't know if the update needs to wait for
a significant change, or not, or whether the copyright update it itself
is a legally significant change. Regardless, I was pretty sure that
pending another end of the world, someone was going to make a significant
change sometime in 2013... Just the ChangeLog rotation, for instance,
which was made prior to the copyright update, could qualify as
a significant change...

-- 
Joel