Re: Years in copyright notices

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     What is the exact policy concerning copyright years?  I see that some
>     people update the copyright years when they make changes, but
>     apparently most people do not.  Are copyright years automatically
>     updated from CVS data when a release is made?
> 
> We need to update the copyright years for all the files.
> 
> One reason we don't always add a year when making a change is that we
> don't add a year when only small changes are made during that year.
> That means that people making small changes in a file often don't
> check to see whether the changes in the current year are enough to
> justify adding the year.
> 
> Does anyone want to help in this process of adding the years
> that should be added?

If we just want to document the years that have any changes at all
(i.e. not differentiate between small and big changes), it is a fairly
easy task to accomplish (and automate) --

For each file do:

1) cvs update FILE
2) cvs log FILE
3) find the YEAR of each log entry and put it into a list
   (if not already there)
4) sort the list
5) update the copyright in FILE using that list
6) cvs commit -m"Updated copyright years" FILE

In the process, all 2-digit years would be converted into 4-digit
years.

Of course, step 5 and 6 should be avoided if the current list of
years in FILE is already correct.

A Miles pointed out, this will lead to some merge conflicts, but since
this is legal stuff, we have to accept that inconvenience.

I can do this if you approve.

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