Copyright information in headers

[Dimiter Naydenov]

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On  4.09.2014 00:54, David Cheney wrote:
> I think this is needless busy work, I vote that as long as there is
> a copyright header with _a_ year, that is sufficient.
> 

+100
Let's not do that please, it's pointless.

> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 7:50 AM, 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
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> 


- -- 
Dimiter Naydenov <dimiter.naydenov at canonical.com>
juju-core team
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