Re: Adding missing copyright years

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:

>  >     This can't be done completely mechanically, since one has to check
>  >     when the last copyrightable changes (and not all changes are
>  >     copyrightable) have been, correct?
>  > 
>  > That's correct, aside from one subtle point.  It's not that "not all
>  > changes are copyrightable" but rather that "not all changes are big
>  > enough to count for copyright purposes".  So the question, for each
>  > year, is "were substantial changes made during that year".  If yes,
>  > that year should be mentioned.
>  > 
>  > Substantial means adding up to more than 10-15 lines of total change.
>
> Trying to reduce it to a formula for files whose history that we're
> not familiar with:
>
> e.g choosing cmacexp.el at random
>
> cvs annotate cmacexp.el > files.ann
>
> grep "..-...-05" cmacexp.ann | wc
>      13     104     962
>
> 13 < 15 => don't add copyright year.
>
> What are the consequences of adding a year where no copyrightable changes
> were made? Presumably this is less serious than not adding a year where
> such changes were made.
>
> How about developing a script to update these changes automatically?

Refilling a paragraph, reindenting and similar are purely mechanical
(non-copyrightable) changes with possibly large numbers of changed
lines.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum