Adding missing copyright years

Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

One thing that needs doing before the release
is to add the newer years in copyright notices.

Can people please volunteer to do this for parts of the distribution?
For instance, you could pick a subdir of lisp and do that subdir.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <E1DTRzB-0006KL-5f@fencepost.gnu.org>, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> One thing that needs doing before the release
> is to add the newer years in copyright notices.

> Can people please volunteer to do this for parts of the distribution?
> For instance, you could pick a subdir of lisp and do that subdir.

I'll do that for lisp/international and lisp/language.

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa@m17n.org

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> One thing that needs doing before the release
> is to add the newer years in copyright notices.
>
> Can people please volunteer to do this for parts of the distribution?
> For instance, you could pick a subdir of lisp and do that subdir.

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?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    > Can people please volunteer to do this for parts of the distribution?
    > For instance, you could pick a subdir of lisp and do that subdir.

    I'll do that for lisp/international and lisp/language.

Thank you.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    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.

So yes, a human being has to check it.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <E1DTmIf-0001Ab-WC@fencepost.gnu.org>, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>>  Can people please volunteer to do this for parts of the distribution?
>>  For instance, you could pick a subdir of lisp and do that subdir.

>     I'll do that for lisp/international and lisp/language.

> Thank you.

I've just added this information in admin/FOR-RELEASE.

** Add missing years in copyright notices of all files.

DIRECTORY		STATUS		IN CHARGE
---------		------		---------
lisp/international	working		Kenichi Handa
lisp/languages		working		Kenichi Handa

When I finished them, I'll change "working" to "done".

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa@m17n.org

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Nick Roberts]

 >     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?

Nick

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[David Kastrup]

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

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Nick Roberts]

David Kastrup writes:
 > > 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

I mean cvs annotate cmacexp.el > cmacexp.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.

These can only make the number greater so the conclusion for the above example
would still be correct. Also thats why I ask what are the consequences of
adding a year where no copyrightable changes were made.

It seems sensible to semi-automate the process at least. To use fashionable
language, I was trying to extablish best practice for that process.

Nick

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> Date: Sat, 07 May 2005 07:29:24 +0200
> Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Refilling a paragraph, reindenting and similar are purely mechanical
> (non-copyrightable) changes with possibly large numbers of changed
> lines.

Which is one reason why I think such changes should not be done
without a _very_ good reason, like if the original code is very hard
to read.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>
> Date: Sat, 7 May 2005 14:24:56 +1200
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> How about developing a script to update these changes automatically?

This is Emacs, so doing this in Lisp would be the default ;-)

Also, given the comments David and others posted, I think this calls
for non-trivial text processing, so I think Lisp is a better vehicle
for technical reasons as well.  It's quite possible such a feature
needs to allow the user to interactively decide whether a given change
justifies copyright updates.

If this is written, I think it belongs to admin.el.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Stefan Monnier]

> How about developing a script to update these changes automatically?

I'm using the following:

    (add-hook 'before-save-hook 'copyright-update)

Hopefully more people would use it,


        Stefan

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Luc Teirlinck]

   > How about developing a script to update these changes automatically?

   I'm using the following:

       (add-hook 'before-save-hook 'copyright-update)

   Hopefully more people would use it,

The problem is many non-copyrightable small changes that combine into
a copyrightable change.

Sincerely,

Luc.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    ** Add missing years in copyright notices of all files.

    DIRECTORY		STATUS		IN CHARGE
    ---------		------		---------
    lisp/international	working		Kenichi Handa
    lisp/languages		working		Kenichi Handa

    When I finished them, I'll change "working" to "done".

Thanks.

Would someone else please undertake another part of the sources?

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    cvs annotate cmacexp.el > files.ann

    grep "..-...-05" cmacexp.ann | wc
	 13     104     962

    13 < 15 => don't add copyright year.

That would be easy but it wouldn't give the right answer.  counting
lines changed is not the same As counting the size of the changes.  If
the change is to rename foo to bar everywhere, that really counts as
just one word of change even though it may be repeated many times.

    How about developing a script to update these changes automatically?

This is not a mechanical question and it can't be answered by a script.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Juanma Barranquero]

One question from a total non-laywer.

Has been suggested to use the output of annotate as a guide; that
would mean that only the *remaining* code is copyrightable. Is that
so?

What I mean is, if someone made a significant change to foo.el in
2003, and some other people did another significant change to foo.el
in 2005, so there's no remaining code in foo.el from the 2003 change,
should the copyright be "2003, 2005" or just "2005"? I think is the
later (otherwise it would be imposible to expurge files from unwanted,
non-GPLed material that entered by accident), but I want to be sure.

-- 
                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Nick Roberts]

 > Has been suggested to use the output of annotate as a guide; that
 > would mean that only the *remaining* code is copyrightable. Is that
 > so?
 > 
 > What I mean is, if someone made a significant change to foo.el in
 > 2003, and some other people did another significant change to foo.el
 > in 2005, so there's no remaining code in foo.el from the 2003 change,
 > should the copyright be "2003, 2005" or just "2005"? I think is the
 > later (otherwise it would be imposible to expurge files from unwanted,
 > non-GPLed material that entered by accident), but I want to be sure.

So I guess you would need to run cvs annotate for each year:

e.g

cvs annotate -D 2004-12-31 cmacexp.el > cmacexp04.ann
grep "..-...-04" cmacexp04.ann | wc

cvs annotate -D 2003-12-31 cmacexp.el > cmacexp03.ann
grep "..-...-03" cmacexp03.ann | wc

It would seem that it can't be done mechanically, so maybe the (lisp) code
could invoke vc-annotate in some way for manual inspection.

Nick

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    I'm using the following:

	(add-hook 'before-save-hook 'copyright-update)

    Hopefully more people would use it,

This adds the current year regardless of the amount of changes,
even for something like changing the FSF's address or removing
spurious whitespace.  It isn't the right thing.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Andreas Schwab]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     I'm using the following:
>
> 	(add-hook 'before-save-hook 'copyright-update)
>
>     Hopefully more people would use it,
>
> This adds the current year regardless of the amount of changes,
> even for something like changing the FSF's address or removing
> spurious whitespace.  It isn't the right thing.

This is not a problem since you are asked whether you want to update the
copyright.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    What I mean is, if someone made a significant change to foo.el in
    2003, and some other people did another significant change to foo.el
    in 2005, so there's no remaining code in foo.el from the 2003 change,
    should the copyright be "2003, 2005" or just "2005"? I think is the
    later

If the 2003 code was simply replaced, then 2003 should not appear
in the list.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    It would seem that it can't be done mechanically, so maybe the (lisp) code
    could invoke vc-annotate in some way for manual inspection.

Although the decision calls for human judgment, it may be possible to
develop tools that make the process more convenient.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Nick Roberts]

Richard Stallman writes:
 >     What I mean is, if someone made a significant change to foo.el in
 >     2003, and some other people did another significant change to foo.el
 >     in 2005, so there's no remaining code in foo.el from the 2003 change,
 >     should the copyright be "2003, 2005" or just "2005"? I think is the
 >     later
 > 
 > If the 2003 code was simply replaced, then 2003 should not appear
 > in the list.

So, in principle, updating the copyright might not just entail adding
copyright years but also taking them away. However I still don't understand
what the problem is if the copyright includes years for which the there
are no copyrightable changes.

Clearly I am not going to volunteer to do something that I don't understand. I
think others are also unsure about what is needed.

Nick

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Miles Bader]

On 5/8/05, Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> wrote:
> >       (add-hook 'before-save-hook 'copyright-update)
> 
> This is not a problem since you are asked whether you want to update the
> copyright.

Indeed; I use it, and I don't think it's dangerous in the way Richard
suggested (it always leaves the final decision to the user).

However, I can see why some people would not like to use it in its
current form -- it's generally quite stupid, and often mistakenly
thinks the copyright may need updating when the current copyright line
is actually up-to-date.  So it tends to ask you whether you want to
update the copyright far more often than it should (for example, it
doesn't understand wrapped copyright lines, and gets confused if there
are multiple copyrights).

-Miles
-- 
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Stefan Monnier]

>> >       (add-hook 'before-save-hook 'copyright-update)
>> 
>> This is not a problem since you are asked whether you want to update the
>> copyright.

> Indeed; I use it, and I don't think it's dangerous in the way Richard
> suggested (it always leaves the final decision to the user).

> However, I can see why some people would not like to use it in its
> current form -- it's generally quite stupid, and often mistakenly
> thinks the copyright may need updating when the current copyright line
> is actually up-to-date.  So it tends to ask you whether you want to
> update the copyright far more often than it should (for example, it
> doesn't understand wrapped copyright lines, and gets confused if there
> are multiple copyrights).

I haven't seen the problem with wrapped lines, but as far as multiple
copyrights goes I use a the local hack below where I can specify a regexp
for the copyrights that I'm willing to change (e.g. I don't want my edits to
add a year to the copyright of someone else, right?).

I've then set copyright-names-regexp to "Monnier\\|Free Software".
This way when I edit a file with multiple copyrights, only the relevant line
is checked/updated.  I've only written it recently (after the feature
freeze), which is why I haven't tried to install it.


        Stefan


--- orig/lisp/emacs-lisp/copyright.el
+++ mod/lisp/emacs-lisp/copyright.el
@@ -54,6 +54,13 @@
   :group 'copyright
   :type 'regexp)
 
+(defcustom copyright-names-regexp ""
+  "Regexp matching the names which correspond to the user.
+Only copyright lines where the name matches this regexp will be updated.
+This allows you to avoid adding yars to a copyright notice belonging to
+someone else or to a group for which you do not work."
+  :type 'regexp)
+
 (defcustom copyright-years-regexp
  "\\(\\s *\\)\\([1-9]\\([-0-9, ';/*%#\n\t]\\|\\s<\\|\\s>\\)*[0-9]+\\)"
   "*Match additional copyright notice years.
@@ -83,7 +90,17 @@
   "String representing the current year.")
 
 (defun copyright-update-year (replace noquery)
-  (when (re-search-forward copyright-regexp (+ (point) copyright-limit) t)
+  (when
+      (condition-case err
+	  (re-search-forward (concat "\\(" copyright-regexp
+				     "\\)\\([ \t]*\n\\)?.*\\(?:"
+				     copyright-names-regexp "\\)")
+			     (+ (point) copyright-limit) t)
+	;; In case the regexp is rejected.  This is useful because
+	;; copyright-update is typically called from before-save-hook where
+	;; such an error is very inconvenient for the user.
+	(error (message "Can't update copyright: %s" err) nil))
+    (goto-char (match-end 1))
     ;; If the years are continued onto multiple lined
     ;; that are marked as comments, skip to the end of the years anyway.
     (while (save-excursion
@@ -94,7 +111,7 @@
 		  (save-match-data
 		    (forward-line 1)
 		    (and (looking-at comment-start-skip)
-			 (goto-char (match-end 0))))
+			 (goto-char (match-end 1))))
 		  (save-match-data
 		    (looking-at copyright-years-regexp))))
       (forward-line 1)
@@ -103,7 +120,7 @@
 
     ;; Note that `current-time-string' isn't locale-sensitive.
     (setq copyright-current-year (substring (current-time-string) -4))
-    (unless (string= (buffer-substring (- (match-end 2) 2) (match-end 2))
+    (unless (string= (buffer-substring (- (match-end 3) 2) (match-end 3))
 		     (substring copyright-current-year -2))
       (if (or noquery
 	      (y-or-n-p (if replace

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    So, in principle, updating the copyright might not just entail adding
    copyright years but also taking them away.

Yes, in some cases.

					       However I still don't understand
    what the problem is if the copyright includes years for which the there
    are no copyrightable changes.

We would in some sense be making a false statement, and that might
be embarrassing some day.  We should try our best to avoid inaccuracy.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Alexander Pohoyda]

Just a small bug report about copyright-fix-years function
(copyright.el, CVS:1.51)

Insert this line into a buffer:
; Copyright (C) 99 by Some Company.

Call copyright-fix-years function, we get:
;Copyright (C) 99, 05 by Some Company

Call the same function again, we get:
;Copyright (C) 99, 2005 by Some Company

Call the same function again, we get:
;Copyright (C) 99, 2005by Some Company

Anybody cares to fix this?  Is this function used at all?  It should
be at least wrapped in (save-excursion (save-restriction ...)), I
suppose.


-- 
Alexander Pohoyda <alexander.pohoyda@gmx.net>
PGP Key fingerprint: 7F C9 CC 5A 75 CD 89 72  15 54 5F 62 20 23 C6 44

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

I fixed these bugs.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <E1DUU9L-0006q7-7H@fencepost.gnu.org>, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     ** Add missing years in copyright notices of all files.
>     DIRECTORY		STATUS		IN CHARGE
>     ---------		------		---------
>     lisp/international	working		Kenichi Handa
>     lisp/languages		working		Kenichi Handa

>     When I finished them, I'll change "working" to "done".

I've finished them and started working on `leim' subdir.
Now I have a question.  Some files under leim/quail are
generated from original files under XXX-DIC, and thus they
currently contain verbatim copy of copyright notices of the
original files as attached.

Are they ok, or should we change the format somehow?

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa@m17n.org


--- PY.el ---
;; Quail package `chinese-py' -*- coding:iso-2022-7bit; -*-
;;   Generated by the command `miscdic-convert'
;;   Date: Fri May 13 13:49:43 2005
;;   Source dictionary file: pinyin.map
;;   Copyright notice of the source file
;;------------------------------------------------------
;; "pinyin.map" is included in a free package called CCE.  It is
;; available at:
;;	http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main
;;		/source/utils/cce_0.36.orig.tar.gz
;; This package contains the following copyright notice.
;;
;;
;;             Copyright (C) 1999, Rui He, herui@cs.duke.edu
;;
;;
;;                  CCE(Console Chinese Environment) 0.32
;;
;; CCE is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
;; terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
;; Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version.
;;
;; CCE is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
;; WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
;; FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more
;; details.
;;
;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
;; CCE; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
;; 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
;;------------------------------------------------------

--- 4Corner.el ---
;; Quail package `chinese-4corner' -*- coding:iso-2022-7bit; -*-
;;   Generated by the command `titdic-convert'
;;	Date: Fri May 13 13:49:40 2005
;;	Original TIT dictionary file: 4Corner.tit

;;; Comment:

;; Byte-compile this file again after any modification.

;;; Start of the header of original TIT dictionary.
[...]
;; COMMENT Copyright (c) 2001 Christian Wittern <chris@ccbs.ntu.edu.tw>
;; COMMENT 
;; COMMENT Permission to copy and distribute both modified and
;; COMMENT unmodified versions is granted without royalty provided this
;; COMMENT notice is preserved.
;; COMMENT 
;; COMMENT	Authors: Dr. Urs App, Christian Wittern (Kyoto Univ, Japan)

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Alexander Pohoyda]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I fixed these bugs.

Yes, thanks a lot!

Wouldn't it make sense to save excursion and restriction in
copyright-fix-years function?


-- 
Alexander Pohoyda <alexander.pohoyda@gmx.net>
PGP Key fingerprint: 7F C9 CC 5A 75 CD 89 72  15 54 5F 62 20 23 C6 44

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Glenn Morris]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> 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.

What if 10 lines get changed in each year of (say) 2000-2005
inclusive? Each year, the changes are too small to be substantial. But
the net result is that the state of the code in 2005 differs
substantially from that of 2000 (by 60 lines in this example). How is
the copyright header supposed to deal with this kind of gradual,
cumulative change?

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    I've finished them and started working on `leim' subdir.
    Now I have a question.  Some files under leim/quail are
    generated from original files under XXX-DIC, and thus they
    currently contain verbatim copy of copyright notices of the
    original files as attached.

If I understand those words right, that is the right thing to do.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <E1DXn0Z-0000bn-KN@fencepost.gnu.org>, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     I've finished them and started working on `leim' subdir.
>     Now I have a question.  Some files under leim/quail are
>     generated from original files under XXX-DIC, and thus they
>     currently contain verbatim copy of copyright notices of the
>     original files as attached.

> If I understand those words right, that is the right thing to do.

Ok, I won't change them.

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa@m17n.org

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    What if 10 lines get changed in each year of (say) 2000-2005
    inclusive? Each year, the changes are too small to be substantial. But
    the net result is that the state of the code in 2005 differs
    substantially from that of 2000 (by 60 lines in this example). How is
    the copyright header supposed to deal with this kind of gradual,
    cumulative change?

I guess in that case we should list the years in which the change
accumulates to enough to be significant.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    Wouldn't it make sense to save excursion and restriction in
    copyright-fix-years function?

I can't afford to spend more time on it now that the bug is fixed,
but if someone else wants to clean up the code, that is ok.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     What if 10 lines get changed in each year of (say) 2000-2005
>     inclusive? Each year, the changes are too small to be substantial. But
>     the net result is that the state of the code in 2005 differs
>     substantially from that of 2000 (by 60 lines in this example). How is
>     the copyright header supposed to deal with this kind of gradual,
>     cumulative change?
>
> I guess in that case we should list the years in which the change
> accumulates to enough to be significant.

Besides the strange updates to cua-base.el / cua-rect.el reported earlier,
I also noticed that in net/telnet.el, year 2004 was _changed_ into 2005.
But while there were changes in 2004, there are no changes in 2005.

TO me, the recent updates seem to be a step backwards, rather than forwards,
in terms of accuracy.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Juanma Barranquero]

> TO me, the recent updates seem to be a step backwards, rather than forwards,
> in terms of accuracy.

I didn't change it, so not sure what's happened, but in any case I
think the procedure is way too prone to error.

If, according to Richard, we must not only put *in* the years where
changes are made, but to take *out* the years which no longer have
relevance (because changes at that year have been deleted afterwards),
that means that, in order to maintain copyright accuracy, every change
should require making sure that all previous years are still correct.
For example, changing a few lines could bring the change level of a
previous year below the 10-15 lines threshold...

And the funny thing is, either we do that every time we edit a file,
or we do a full sweep again for the next release. No automation
possible, and the amount of work done now does not diminish (much) the
amount of work for subsequent releases (I say "much" because obviously
untouched files don't have to be checked again, but... what percentage
of files doesn't change between far-and-between Emacs releases?).

IANAL and so don't fully understand the implications, but it sure
would be easier if previous copyright years wouldn't have to be
revised each and every time, just left alone.

-- 
                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    Besides the strange updates to cua-base.el / cua-rect.el reported earlier,
    I also noticed that in net/telnet.el, year 2004 was _changed_ into 2005.
    But while there were changes in 2004, there are no changes in 2005.

I agree, that seems incorrect.  I guess whoever or whatever made the change
needs to be educated.  Who or what was it?

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

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?

thi

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> TO me, the recent updates seem to be a step backwards, rather
> than forwards, in terms of accuracy.

please see file admin/notes/years (just installed), which is the
basis for which these particular recent changes were made.  i hope
that we can maintain this file to reduce (actual and potential)
confusion.  grepping mailing list archives gets old...

thi

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Glenn Morris]

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.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Glenn Morris]

I'm trying to update the copyright in lisp/calendar, and am finding it
really tough to do a good job. FWIW, my algorithm is something like
this:

1. Make a CVS diff between 00:00 on January first of two consecutive
   years.

2. Work out the "number of lines" changed, bearing in mind that
   renaming "foo" to "bar" in lots of places counts for only one line,
   etc, etc.

3. If the number of lines changed is less than 10-15, carry the number
   forward to the next year, and add it to any changes made that year.
   If the running total becomes greater than 10-15 in any year, add a
   copyright for that year, and reset the running total to zero.

4. Modulate the above with the fact that when Emacs was not available
   via CVS, only years in which releases were made are eligible to be
   in copyright headers. So counts of changed lines should be
   accumulated until release years.

5. Keep track of code deletions. If, at any point, enough code is
   deleted so that the only remaining changes from some past year are
   no longer significant, then that year should not appear in
   copyright headers from that point onwards. This is a real PITA.


Bloomin' lawyers. Grrr...

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 5/18/05, Glenn Morris <gmorris+emacs@ast.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> 5. Keep track of code deletions. If, at any point, enough code is
>    deleted so that the only remaining changes from some past year are
>    no longer significant, then that year should not appear in
>    copyright headers from that point onwards. This is a real PITA.

Yeah. And for Emacs 23 it must be done again. Every single change that
removes or rewrites lines (even changes below the threshold level) can
alter previous years. This is the breaking point; everything else
seems reasonable.

There Must Be A Better Way (or not, it's lawyers we're talkin' about)

-- 
                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I agree, that seems incorrect.  I guess whoever or whatever made the
> change needs to be educated.  Who or what was it?

it was me.  you (and anyone else so inclined) can help educate me by
editing admin/notes/years to correct the erroneous guidelines used when
making those changes.  so educated, i can correct the mistakes.

thi

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    What if 10 lines get changed in each year of (say) 2000-2005
    inclusive? Each year, the changes are too small to be substantial. But
    the net result is that the state of the code in 2005 differs
    substantially from that of 2000 (by 60 lines in this example). How is
    the copyright header supposed to deal with this kind of gradual,
    cumulative change?

In such a borderline case, if we put down just 2005, it would not
be wrong.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

I will discuss all these uncertainties with Eben Moglen and produce
more precise written guidelines.  In particular, I will double-check
the issue of (1) CVS repository distribution, (2) what to
do when small changes add up to large ones over several years,
and (3) what to do about deletion or replacement of code
from previous years.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I will discuss all these uncertainties with Eben Moglen and produce
> more precise written guidelines.  In particular, I will double-check
> the issue of (1) CVS repository distribution, (2) what to do when
> small changes add up to large ones over several years, and (3) what to
> do about deletion or replacement of code from previous years.

thanks, i look forward to this.  in the meantime, i'll defer munging
copyright years and work on something else in FOR-RELEASE.

thi

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <jkll692e2a.fsf@glug.org>, Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnu.org> writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>>  I will discuss all these uncertainties with Eben Moglen and produce
>>  more precise written guidelines.  In particular, I will double-check
>>  the issue of (1) CVS repository distribution, (2) what to do when
>>  small changes add up to large ones over several years, and (3) what to
>>  do about deletion or replacement of code from previous years.

> thanks, i look forward to this.  in the meantime, i'll defer munging
> copyright years and work on something else in FOR-RELEASE.

Me too.  I've already finished `leim' subdir, but don't
commit them for a while.

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa@m17n.org

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Bill Wohler]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     what the problem is if the copyright includes years for which the there
>     are no copyrightable changes.
>
> We would in some sense be making a false statement, and that might
> be embarrassing some day.  We should try our best to avoid inaccuracy.

I just detected two types of errors in the recent copyright
modifications by Thien-Thi Nguyen in the MH-E source as Kim Storm also
observed. The first is that 2005 was added to *all* of the files
although many of the files have not been touched this year. The second
is that several years were removed. In one particularly bad case, 2004
was removed and 2005 was added even though there hadn't been any
changes in 2005 at all, let alone changes to obsolete the 2004
changes.

Note that MH-E package, like Gnus, has its own, more frequent,
releases. Authors of automatic copyright updates should keep this in
mind.

In the next day or two I'll be checking in a new version of MH-E after
merging recent changes from the Emacs repository into it. I'll also
correct these copyright problems as well as compilation warnings that
were recently introduced. As usual, I'll let you know when that
occurs.

Finally, to my knowledge, the copyright "bible" for the Free Software
Foundation is at:

  http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html

In addition, Richard has told me that multi-line copyrights are OK,
and you can use two-digit years as long as they are bracketed by
matching four digit years (for example, 1996, 97, 98, 1999, 2000, 01,
02, 2003).

It would be useful if the maintainer of the above document could add
this information, plus any additional information generated by this
thread. 

My gut feel is that attempting to remove copyright years is going to
create far more problems then it solves. Let's let the sleeping dog lie.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Richard Stallman]

    In addition, Richard has told me that multi-line copyrights are OK,
    and you can use two-digit years as long as they are bracketed by
    matching four digit years (for example, 1996, 97, 98, 1999, 2000, 01,
    02, 2003).

That was what a lawyer told me several years ago, but more recently (a
year or two ago) Eben Moglen said it was better to write each year
number completely.

Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Bill Wohler]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>     In addition, Richard has told me that multi-line copyrights are OK,
>     and you can use two-digit years as long as they are bracketed by
>     matching four digit years (for example, 1996, 97, 98, 1999, 2000, 01,
>     02, 2003).
> 
> That was what a lawyer told me several years ago, but more recently (a
> year or two ago) Eben Moglen said it was better to write each year
> number completely.

I'd have to agree too (not that my opinion counts ;-). I'll do that in
the MH-E package while I'm at it. Thanks for the info.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.