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Re: [Groff] [groff] 01/01: In groff source top directory add Emacs setti


From: Ingo Schwarze
Subject: Re: [Groff] [groff] 01/01: In groff source top directory add Emacs settings for most text files.
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2014 01:51:37 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

Hi Werner,

Werner LEMBERG wrote on Wed, Sep 03, 2014 at 12:50:35AM +0200:
> Ingo Schwarze wrote:

>> [...] Consequently, bumping the list of copyright years in such a
>> case is a misrepresentation of the legal situation - unless you
>> bumped based on some *other*, indeed copyrightable change, but a
>> quick "git log -- FDL" gives me the impression that is not the case.

> The FSF thinks differently: The copyright years should be the same in
> all files of a package.

Oh.  Just in case anybody wonders about that, here is a link:
  https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html

So trying to paraphrase the relevant part, the argument is that it is
legally sufficient and simpler to regard all files having the same
copyright holder as one work (as opposed to treating each file as a
separate work), and consequently cite the same list of years in each
of them.  Of course, that doesn't apply to files included from outside
sources or having other copyright holders.

I wasn't aware of that FSF recommendation, thanks for pointing it
out.  It doesn't look like groff is following it very rigourously,
or more files would have copyright notices saying 1989-2014 or
something similar.  From a quick look at the output of "find . -type
f -exec grep Copyright {} \;", i couldn't find a single file using
that convention.  Quite to the contrary, almost all files at least
seem to attempt documenting their very own copyright years.

Whatever, you are certainly perfectly free to choose your own
policy in this respect.  :-)

Changing "2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008" to "2000, 2001, 2002, 2007,
2008, 2014" without changing the content does not seem consistent
with either policy, and it looked like a common error that happens
when people try to follow the "copyright notice per file" policy.

Yours,
  Ingo



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