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package-wide copyright year updates
From: |
Joel E. Denny |
Subject: |
package-wide copyright year updates |
Date: |
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:20:59 -0400 (EDT) |
User-agent: |
Alpine 1.00 (DEB 882 2007-12-20) |
On some other GNU mailing list (I can't remember which), I recently
noticed a discussion about a change in GNU's recommendation for copyright
year updates. Here's the new recommendation:
To update the list of year numbers, add each year in which you have
made nontrivial changes to the package. (Here we assume you're using a
publicly accessible revision control server, so that every revision
installed is also immediately and automatically published.) When you
add the new year, it is not required to keep track of which files have
seen significant changes in the new year and which have not. It is
recommended and simpler to add the new year to all files in the
package, and be done with it for the rest of the year.
I think this is a nice change. I frequently forget to update copyright
years when I write patches. I don't like wasting time checking whether I
need to update the year every time I write a patch. I don't like the
distraction when reading diffs. Occasionally, I've noticed a cherry-pick
that fails to update the year in the target branch because it was
previously updated only in the source branch. I'd be happy to be rid of
all this hassle.
Does anyone object to adopting this policy for Bison? If not, I'll follow
with a patch to update the copyright year in every file in master,
branch-2.5, and branch-2.4.2.
Akim, I'll be sure to wait for your opinion before proceeding. If you
want some time to consider this proposal, I'll be happy to wait a couple
of weeks for your return.
- package-wide copyright year updates,
Joel E. Denny <=