How to update the copyright notice?

How to update the copyright notice?

[Xue Fuqiao]

The year 2014 is coming, and I'd love to help update the copyright
notices in the repo, like the one committed by Paul[fn:1].

First, I found the `set-copyright' function in admin/admin.el, which can
update the copyright notices for these files:

  configure.ac
  etc/refcards/emacsver.tex
  etc/refcards/ru-refcard.tex
  lib-src/rcs2log
  msdos/sed2v2.inp
  nt/config.nt

The copyright strings for these files are simply "Copyright (C) 2013
Free Software Foundation, Inc." and they do not contain year ranges (not
sure whether they are the only ones that don't contain a year range).
`set-copyright' works well on these files, but I'd like to perform this
action "globally".

From admin/notes/years, I knew that maintaining copyright years is now
very simple: every time a new year rolls around, add that year to every
FSF (and AIST) copyright notice.  Do we have a such script/function that
can do this job?  If not, IMHO we need a function that can change all
"2013"s to "2014", recursively, except for:

a) All ChangeLog files;
b) New files created this year, since we need to change the single year
   to a year range
c) The years processed by `set-copyright', since they don't contain year
   ranges;
d) Something like
   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/.*/\([[:digit:]]\)-[[:digit:]]/.*html
   often appears in the comment or main body of a file

Then manually check if there are any "2013" being replaced improperly
(see Makefile.in in the root of repo for example), fix them, and
commit.  Any ideas?

Footnotes:

[fn:1] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=6aef6b19675b70f1786b16782c277b375257e640


-- 
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Paul Eggert]

Xue Fuqiao wrote:
> I'd love to help update the copyright
> notices in the repo, like the one committed by Paul[fn:1].

I documented the procedure that I used last year,
as trunk bzr 115735.  It's packaged up as a new script
'admin/update-copyright'.

The procedure leaves AIST copyright dates alone,
partly because I didn't know about them last year,
and partly because I don't know how to update them
(there's some relationship between years and copyright
registration that I don't understand).
I put a FIXME for this into the new file
admin/update-copyright.

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Glenn Morris]

Xue Fuqiao wrote:

> The year 2014 is coming, and I'd love to help update the copyright
> notices in the repo, like the one committed by Paul[fn:1].

I really appreciate your enthusiasm, and please don't take this the
wrong way, but could you perhaps try to focus on more important things?
For example, I've been hoping you would comment on
http://debbugs.gnu.org/15754 .

Updating the copyrights is a meaningless, almost entirely automatic
task, that only one person can sensibly do. IMO, you really should not
waste time learning about it.

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Glenn Morris]

Paul Eggert wrote:

> I documented the procedure that I used last year, as trunk bzr 115735.
> It's packaged up as a new script 'admin/update-copyright'.

Awesome, thanks.
The inevitable, pointless, minor quibble: can it stop refilling
copyright notices?
Because frankly I think I had them all adjusted nicely by hand, then last
year a bunch of them got refilled (in the intervening period I've
been putting them back when I notice). I'm talking about things being
changed from something like

;; Copyright (C) 1993-1994, 1998-1999, 2001-2012
;;   Free Software Foundation, Inc.

to

;; Copyright (C) 1993-1994, 1998-1999, 2001-2013 Free Software
;; Foundation, Inc.


Feel free to ignore this, which is obviously what I should do! :)


> The procedure leaves AIST copyright dates alone,

That's TRT IMO.

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Glenn Morris]

PS Why is update-copyright in build-aux when it has nothing to do with
building Emacs? Why is it not in admin?

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Paul Eggert]

Glenn Morris wrote:
> Why is update-copyright in build-aux when it has nothing to do with
> building Emacs? Why is it not in admin?

Merely because it's called build-aux/update-copyright in Gnulib.
We can easily move it somewhere else in Emacs, if you like; just
name your favorite location.  It is a bit confusing to have two
different scripts admin/update-copyright (Emacs-specific) and
build-aux/update-copyright (Gnulib generic).

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Paul Eggert]

Glenn Morris wrote:

> can it [update-copyright] stop refilling copyright notices?

That's a property of Gnulib's build-aux/update-copyright script.
I suspect that part of the code dates back to when we had long
lists of individual years, like this:

  # Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

such that it made sense to refill when adding yet another year.
Now, when we typically just substitute 2013 for 2012 there's less
motivation for refilling.

I'll CC: this to bug-gnulib, where the maintainer of
build-aux/update-copyright hangs out, to see if he has some
comments.  I expect we can add another option or environ
variable or something.

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Jarek Czekalski]

W dniu 12/24/2013 08:16 PM, Glenn Morris pisze:
> Updating the copyrights is a meaningless, almost entirely automatic 
> task, that only one person can sensibly do. IMO, you really should not 
> waste time learning about it. 

Updating copyright notice is as useless as the gnu license note itself 
in all files. If we are serious about the copyright notice, we should 
also be serious about the dates. I don't understand why we should state 
in all the files that they were modified in 2014, if they actually were 
not. On the other hand I wouldn't start a discussion about it, but if 
someone wants to start a discusion about the pointelessness of copyright 
notice, I think I may chime in. I believe in gnu license and treat it 
seriously. See this post for example:
https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/viewtopic.php?p=30185&sid=3aa0fd477d05c2e34adb5aa30710c18b

Jarek

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Wed, Dec 25, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:
> Xue Fuqiao wrote:
>
>> The year 2014 is coming, and I'd love to help update the copyright
>> notices in the repo, like the one committed by Paul[fn:1].
>
> I really appreciate your enthusiasm, and please don't take this the
> wrong way, but could you perhaps try to focus on more important
> things?

OK.

> For example, I've been hoping you would comment on
> http://debbugs.gnu.org/15754 .

Oh, I didn't see this bug report.  I'll look into it later, thank you.

-- 
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

    Updating copyright notice is as useless as the gnu license note itself 
    in all files. If we are serious about the copyright notice, we should 
    also be serious about the dates. I don't understand why we should state 
    in all the files that they were modified in 2014, if they actually were 
    not.

Our lawyer said to list, in each file of Emacs, the years in which
Emacs (as a whole) was modified nontrivially.  Once Emacs is modified
nontrivially in 2014, that list of years should include 2014.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.

Re: How to update the copyright notice?

[Glenn Morris]

Actually, unless you've modified it, I don't see why we even need a copy
in the Emacs repo at all. Surely the one person who needs to use it can
fetch the latest version direct from gnulib. That's how it works eg with
gnupload, which gets used a great deal more often than once a year in
connection with Emacs.