Re: remove copyright from man/*.x ?

[Bernhard Voelker]

Hi Assaf,

On 08/16/2015 11:48 PM, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> 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.

help2man places a separate copyright notice into the man/*.1 files,
regardless of whether the *.x includes it or not.

> 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:

I see the point of having such a legal notice.  However, I don't
like the idea of having it only in a couple of files, depending on
a line count threshold.  E.g. we'll most probably forget to add/remove
the note if a *.x file grows or shrinks.

Therefore, adding such a note to all *.x files seems to be more consistent.
So back to the question in my original mail:
what copyright year range should be chosen?

Thanks & have a nice day,
Berny