Re: [patch] Create cleanups.[ch]

Pedro Alves
2012-04-18T09:32:58Z

On 04/16/2012 07:50 PM, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:

> On Monday, April 16 2012, Pedro Alves wrote:
>
>> On 04/16/2012 06:00 AM, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:
>>> It should be:
>>
>>>
>>> Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>>>
>>> AFAIK, since it's a new file.
>>
>>
>> But the contents are not new. By that reasoning, if we renamed
>> every file in the tree, while changing nothing else, all the copyright
>> years would end up 2012 only. I don't think that'd be right.
>
> I always thought that the Copyright referred to the file itself, so if
> you create a new file you should "restart" the Copyright notice even if
> this file doesn't contain new things. After all, if you moved things
> around, they were already covered by the copyright of the file which
> they belonged before.

But then if you follow that patch one extra step, you can rename
the files back to their original names, and what you end up with
is exactly with you started with, except you've lost all your copyright
years. If that's okay, then I've just proven that a copyright year list
is insignificant and unnecessary, and we can just go do a wholesale pass
on the whole codebase replacing all the multiple years by a single
"2012" year.

> Anyway, I'm not an expert, so thanks for clarifying.

I'm not an expert either. Better ask the FSF indeed. But please do
raise my point above with them.

--
Pedro Alves