Copyright notices

Copyright notices

[Richard M. Stallman]

Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs
since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years.  We don't
need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years.
It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!).

For those files that have been added since then, we should add
the year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years.

This is much easier than before, since it doesn't require checking anything
except whether the file was added after Emacs 21 and (if so) what
year it was added in.

Can people please start the work over, based on this advice?

Copyright notices

[Richard M. Stallman]

I sent instructions checked by our lawyer for how to update the lists
of years, but people haven't resumed updating the notices.
Could people please start doing that again?

Re: Copyright notices

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

"Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Could people please start doing that again?

i just updated admin/notes/years.

will handle those FOR-RELEASE dirs next to my name
sometime this weekend (next two days).

thi

Copyright notices

[Nick Roberts]

 > I sent instructions checked by our lawyer for how to update the lists
 > of years, but people haven't resumed updating the notices.
 > Could people please start doing that again?

I will do the lisp/progmodes directory (probably sometime next week).

Nick

Re: Copyright notices

[Richard M. Stallman]

    I will do the lisp/progmodes directory (probably sometime next week).

Thanks.

I think we should redo every file according to the new legal advice.

Re: Copyright notices

[Nick Roberts]

 >     I will do the lisp/progmodes directory (probably sometime next week).
 > 
 > Thanks.
 > 
 > I think we should redo every file according to the new legal advice.

It occurs to me that if there isn't a release until 2006 (or later!) then all
the files will need to be changed again.  Now that the legal advice suggests a
straightforward solution perhaps this process could (ultimately) be scripted.

Given that the copyright seems to apply to Emacs as a whole:

"Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs
 since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years.  We don't
 need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years.
 It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!).

perhaps all files could display the _same_ copyright notice (apart from
comment delimiters) for the period from the start of Emacs (1985?) to the
present?

Currently emacs/admin/notes/years has the above paragraph and notes from our
earlier uninformed discussions.  I think the latter should be removed and
(some of it contradicts the paragraph) and some statement about partial dates
e.g 1994,95,96,97 and periods e.g 2001-2004 could be added.  Ideally the file
should really be written by a lawyer if thats possible.

I am somewhat surprised that the FSF doesn't aleady have clear guidelines
about copyright notices for GNU projects and Free Software in general.
Currently, if I start GDB from CVS, I get:

> nickrob/39 src/gdb/gdb
> GNU gdb 6.3.50.20050729-cvs
> Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
> welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
> Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
> There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for details.
> This GDB was configured as "i586-pc-linux-gnu".
> (gdb) 

Not only is the year wrong but it seems to suggest that everything before 2004
is not copyrighted.  I don't pretend to understand these issues but it seems
like we could be giving away the family silver.

Nick

Re: Copyright notices

[Stefan Monnier]

> It occurs to me that if there isn't a release until 2006 (or later!) then
> all the files will need to be changed again.  Now that the legal advice
> suggests a straightforward solution perhaps this process could
> (ultimately) be scripted.

Note that it doesn't say that we necessarily need to add the subsequent
years after the latest change.

        Stefan

Re: Copyright notices

[Richard M. Stallman]

    It occurs to me that if there isn't a release until 2006 (or
    later!) then all the files will need to be changed again.  Now
    that the legal advice suggests a straightforward solution perhaps
    this process could (ultimately) be scripted.

It could be so.

    perhaps all files could display the _same_ copyright notice (apart from
    comment delimiters) for the period from the start of Emacs (1985?) to the
    present?

No, because most files were added to Emacs later than 1985, and some of them
have years when they were released by their authors bevore they were added
to Emacs.

A script to add a certain year to all files in a certain directory,
or to the files that are specified for it, would do the job.
Doing this is not quite trivial, but not terribly hard.

Would you like to write it?

    Not only is the year wrong but it seems to suggest that everything before 2004
    is not copyrighted.

No, it doesn't mean that.  Don't worry.

Re: Copyright notices

[Richard M. Stallman]

    > It occurs to me that if there isn't a release until 2006 (or later!) then
    > all the files will need to be changed again.  Now that the legal advice
    > suggests a straightforward solution perhaps this process could
    > (ultimately) be scripted.

    Note that it doesn't say that we necessarily need to add the subsequent
    years after the latest change.

What does "subsequent years after the latest change" mean?

Re: Copyright notices

[Richard M. Stallman]

    I'll start thinking about how to do it.  Since the copyright notices won't be
    all the same any script must be able to handle the differences.

All it needs to do is add a specified year.
Just running copyright-update on all the files that have
a copyright notice should do the job.

Re: Copyright notices

[Juri Linkov]

> There are about 2000 files with copyright notices.  If these are all
> done manually, changing them twice seems to me to be an inefficient
> way of working.  If, as Stefan suggests, only those changed in 2006
> need their copyright changed again then maybe it's not so bad.

I guess not all files changed in 2006 need their copyright updated.
For example, it would be good to remove trailing whitespace from all
files just before the release.  Updating copyright is not needed
after such change.

> I'll start thinking about how to do it.  Since the copyright notices
> won't be all the same any script must be able to handle the differences.
> I'm thinking of something that keeps the user in the loop, like
> query replace or ediff, where he will be presented with a proposed
> change which he can decline or accept.

A good interface for mass-replacing is query-replace.  You can just do

M-x find-dired RET -name '*.el' RET t Q

and use a function call like  \,(copyright-fix-years \0)
in the replacement part.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/