Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Glenn Morris <gmorris+emacs@ast.cam.ac.uk>]

Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:

> Glenn Morris <gmorris+emacs@ast.cam.ac.uk> writes:
>
>> How is the copyright header supposed to deal with this kind of
>> gradual, cumulative change?
>
> does admin/notes/years (just installed) address this question?

A list of guidelines like this is clearly needed and should prove very
helpful, thanks.

An initial comment:

- sometimes the release year slips, leaving a file w/ prematurely
  marked release year => need update (e.g., s/2004/2005/ for Emacs 22)

It is my understanding this is not correct when the source is
available all the time via CVS. Whenever changes are made they can be
considered to be "released". This means that for Emacs, a distinction
must be made between the periods before/after the point when
development switched to CVS (this was when?). Before this point, one
needs to know the years when releases were made. After this point, the
dates of releases become irrelevant.

This probably explains the "2004 changed into 2005" issue.