Re: remove copyright from man/*.x ?

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello Bernhard,

On 08/16/2015 05:27 PM, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> Only 6 out of the 105 man/*.x files have a copyright notice:
>
>    $ git ls-files -- man/*.x | wc -l
>    105
>
>    $ GIT_PAGER= git grep Copyright -- man/*.x
>    man/chmod.x:'\" Copyright (C) 1998-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>    man/chown.x:'\" Copyright (C) 1998-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>    man/df.x:'\" Copyright (C) 1998-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>    man/du.x:'\" Copyright (C) 1998-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>    man/rm.x:'\" Copyright (C) 1998-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>    man/stdbuf.x:'\" Copyright (C) 2009-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>
> The following patch would remove it from there.  Okay?

I'd suggest keeping them.

The copyright statements (and license notices that follows below them) are 
troff comments,
and these ".x" files can be considered "source files" - which are later merged 
into the final man page file.

Using my 'savannah volunteer' hat: every 'large enough' source file hosted on 
gnu savannah should carry a clear copyright statement and license notice; the 
cut-off for 'large enough' is usually 20 lines or more, which seems to fit this 
case:

    $ wc  -l *.x | sort -k1n,1 | tail -n 10
       13 date.x
       13 touch.x
       14 runcon.x
       17 stdbuf.x
       28 du.x
       29 df.x
       30 chown.x
       31 rm.x
      111 chmod.x
      756 total
 
regards,
 - assaf