Copyright information in headers

[Gustavo Niemeyer]

I suggest not updating it. Updates on the same line will conflict, and
cause completely unnecessary headaches. These files are under revision
control, so there are better proofs of when it was changed than just
that header. Then, in a decade or two, if somebody cares, update them
all at once.

On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Ian Booth <ian.booth at canonical.com> wrote:
> Hi folks
>
> The question recently came up in reviews as to whether we should be updating the
> date in the copyright statement in the file header when we make a change to the
> code in that file. I sought clarification from Robie Basak, who previously had
> provided input on licensing issues and compliance for getting Juju included in
> trusty. Below is what he said.
>
> TL;DR;
> It doesn't really matter, we just need to agree on a policy. It is suggested
> though that we do update the date when we make a change. Agree?
>
> <snip>
>>
>> What's our policy for dates in copyright headers?
>>
>> // Copyright 2012, 2013 Canonical Ltd.
>> // Licensed under the AGPLv3, see LICENCE file for details.
>
> From the point of view of acceptability for Ubuntu, it doesn't
> particularly matter, and I don't believe it'll cause any issue for us
> whatever you do here. I'll certainly be happy to upload whether or not
> you update the date.
>
> I'll try to explain my perspective on this, but I'm not entirely
> confident that there isn't something I'm missing for the broader
> picture, so note that I Am Not A Lawyer, etc.
>
>> For the above, do we need to add 2014 if we modify the file this year?
>> Or is the date just meant to be the year the file was first published?
>
> I think it's meant to be the sum of all the copyright claims on the
> file. So if you add some new code, you have a copyright claim on the new
> code in the newer year in which you made it.
>
> AIUI, the purpose of the date is that since copyright expires
> (theoretically, anyway), updating the date updates the copyright claim,
> which would give us more control in the (eventual) event that copyright
> expires.
>
> In practice, IMHO this is never going to matter since nobody is going to
> care about the copyright on a piece of software that is that old anyway.
> But I suppose laws could change, so the right thing to do would be to
> add a new year whenever you make a change in a new year on a per-file
> file basis. BTW, it's common to fold "2012, 2013, 2014" to just
> "2012-2014".
>
> But I don't particularly care for upload purposes.
>
>
>
> --
> Juju-dev mailing list
> Juju-dev at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/juju-dev



-- 

gustavo @ http://niemeyer.net