Re: Updating copyright years

[Carsten Mattner]

2012/1/11 Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>:
> On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:35:34 -0800 address@hidden (Randal L. Schwartz) wrote:
>
>>>>>>> "GM" == Glenn Morris <address@hidden> writes:
> GM> Katsumi Yamaoka wrote:
>>>> Emacs people seem to have been updating it at the beginning of
>>>> every year regardless of having been changed or not.
>
> GM> Emacs has done it this way for several years, as documented in
> GM> admin/notes and as recommended in "Information for Maintainers of GNU
> GM> Software":
>
> RLS> That doesn't make it right, and I've gone on the record in the past
> RLS> arguing against it.
>
> Doesn't the act of modifying the file to insert the new year make the
> file modified and thus require the new year?  Heh heh.
>
> (No opinion one way or the other, just found that amusing.)

Does anyone know why it's required to include a date (year) in
copyright headers.

In the same context, do all licenses lend themselve to just be
referred in the file
header (foobar $LICENSE_NAME .... found in LICENSE), or is this dangerous?
Is a complete verbatim copy of the license a requirement? Maybe if the file is
distributed separately?