From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Updating copyright years Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:22:30 +0900 Message-ID: <87y5te8b09.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <37vcoprbco.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <86lipfp1vd.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> <87lipe9wy0.fsf@lifelogs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1326298966 1967 80.91.229.12 (11 Jan 2012 16:22:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:22:46 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Carsten Mattner Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Jan 11 17:22:40 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Rl0wh-0008La-Nc for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:22:39 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41417 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rl0wh-0000Qx-6l for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:22:39 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:36445) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rl0we-0000Qi-AZ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:22:37 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rl0wb-0003OW-JK for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:22:36 -0500 Original-Received: from mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:53453) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rl0wa-0003OA-Mi for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:22:33 -0500 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B525970796; Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:22:30 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 28BA51A29FF; Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:22:30 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta31) "ginger" e6b5c49f9e13 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 130.158.97.224 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:147590 Archived-At: Carsten Mattner writes: > Ted Zlatanov writes: > > Doesn't the act of modifying the file to insert the new year make > > the file modified and thus require the new year? =C2=A0Heh heh. No. Dates are not expressive works. Q.E.D. > Does anyone know why it's required to include a date (year) in > copyright headers. I don't know what the current situation is exactly, but the basic thing is that in the U.S., the automatic Berne Convention copyright doesn't require any notice at all (of course that's true of all Berne Convention signatories). If you receive a work with no notice, you must assume that all (copy) rights are reserved to the owner, even if you don't know who that is. However, the owner's powers of enforcement are basically limited to a cease-and-desist order on copying, and destruction of existing unlicensed copies. If you want to press criminal charges, and IIRC also to sue for damages (at least for statutory damages), you need to register your copyright, and in turn you are obliged to provide a notice of copyright, including when copyrights in the work were established. The reason for that requirement today is mostly moot: copyrights do expire (although we'll probably not see that day), and the copyright notice tells the user when. > In the same context, do all licenses lend themselve to just be > referred in the file > header (foobar $LICENSE_NAME .... found in LICENSE), or is this dangerou= s? > Is a complete verbatim copy of the license a requirement? Maybe if > the file is distributed separately? The problem with a permission-by-reference is that the user doesn't know what her rights are, not that the owner of the copyright can't enforce any restrictions that they choose to maintain (if they're enforceable at all, of course). With a well-known license such as the GPL, it's really not necessary to provide a copy of the license from a legal point of view (except in cases where it's an invariant section in an FDL document or the like). However, the GPL is also an advocacy document, so providing it in every distribution is a GoodThang.