* RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... @ 2012-01-04 9:47 Joel Brobecker 2012-01-04 16:10 ` Tom Tromey ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Joel Brobecker @ 2012-01-04 9:47 UTC (permalink / raw) To: gdb-patches Hello, I thought I was giong to do my best to forget about this as soon as the copyright notices would be updated, but what do you guys think of Jan's remark: > > + 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991-1993, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 > > + > > +... is abbreviated into: > > + > > + 1986, 1988-1989, 1991-1993, 1999-2000, 2007-2011 [...] > IIUC this would allow us to write 1986-2011 everywhere as the GDB > package was nontrivially modified each of these years. Just restating > Joseph. Not totally critical, but I am seduced. I found that the formatting of many copyright headers look a bit ugly before the list of years shown in the notice is long enough that "Free Software Foundation, Inc." would not fit on the rest of the line. WDYT? If people agree, I can put it on my list to do a one-time hack of update-copyright to compress the list into one single range. -- Joel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 9:47 RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices Joel Brobecker @ 2012-01-04 16:10 ` Tom Tromey 2012-01-04 16:19 ` Stan Shebs 2012-01-06 6:23 ` Joel Brobecker 2 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Tom Tromey @ 2012-01-04 16:10 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Joel Brobecker; +Cc: gdb-patches >>>>> "Joel" == Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com> writes: Joel> I thought I was giong to do my best to forget about this as soon as Joel> the copyright notices would be updated, but what do you guys think Joel> of Jan's remark: [...] >> IIUC this would allow us to write 1986-2011 everywhere as the GDB >> package was nontrivially modified each of these years. Just restating >> Joseph. Joel> Not totally critical, but I am seduced. I found that the formatting Joel> of many copyright headers look a bit ugly before the list of years Joel> shown in the notice is long enough that "Free Software Foundation, Inc." Joel> would not fit on the rest of the line. Joel> WDYT? If people agree, I can put it on my list to do a one-time Joel> hack of update-copyright to compress the list into one single range. This change would be fine by me. Tom ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 9:47 RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices Joel Brobecker 2012-01-04 16:10 ` Tom Tromey @ 2012-01-04 16:19 ` Stan Shebs 2012-01-04 16:43 ` Tom Tromey ` (2 more replies) 2012-01-06 6:23 ` Joel Brobecker 2 siblings, 3 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Stan Shebs @ 2012-01-04 16:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: gdb-patches On 1/4/12 1:46 AM, Joel Brobecker wrote: > Hello, > > I thought I was giong to do my best to forget about this as soon as > the copyright notices would be updated, but what do you guys think > of Jan's remark: > >>> + 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991-1993, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 >>> + >>> +... is abbreviated into: >>> + >>> + 1986, 1988-1989, 1991-1993, 1999-2000, 2007-2011 > [...] >> IIUC this would allow us to write 1986-2011 everywhere as the GDB >> package was nontrivially modified each of these years. Just restating >> Joseph. > Not totally critical, but I am seduced. I found that the formatting > of many copyright headers look a bit ugly before the list of years > shown in the notice is long enough that "Free Software Foundation, Inc." > would not fit on the rest of the line. > I agree with making it 1986-2012 everywhere uniformly. For files with new code, it would be nice if the first year in the pair could be the year of the file's creation - it's a little jarring to see something like tic6x-tdep.c with a 1986 date at the top of it. On the other hand, a copyright range like 2005-2012 makes it unclear if one is trying to say that that a particular file was modified each year in the range, or that it's "inheriting" the range from GDB as a whole. Stan ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 16:19 ` Stan Shebs @ 2012-01-04 16:43 ` Tom Tromey 2012-01-04 16:55 ` Pedro Alves 2012-01-04 17:28 ` Alfred M. Szmidt 2 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Tom Tromey @ 2012-01-04 16:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Stan Shebs; +Cc: gdb-patches >>>>> "Stan" == Stan Shebs <stanshebs@earthlink.net> writes: Stan> For files with new code, it would be nice if the first year in the Stan> pair could be the year of the file's creation - it's a little jarring Stan> to see something like tic6x-tdep.c with a 1986 date at the top of it. FWIW, I usually use the original dates if I copy-and-paste a file. I'm not sure if this is really what we're supposed to do, though. Tom ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 16:19 ` Stan Shebs 2012-01-04 16:43 ` Tom Tromey @ 2012-01-04 16:55 ` Pedro Alves 2012-01-04 17:17 ` Joseph S. Myers 2012-01-04 17:28 ` Alfred M. Szmidt 2 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Pedro Alves @ 2012-01-04 16:55 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Stan Shebs; +Cc: gdb-patches On 01/04/2012 04:19 PM, Stan Shebs wrote: > On 1/4/12 1:46 AM, Joel Brobecker wrote: >> Hello, >> >> I thought I was giong to do my best to forget about this as soon as >> the copyright notices would be updated, but what do you guys think >> of Jan's remark: >> >>>> + 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991-1993, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 >>>> + >>>> +... is abbreviated into: >>>> + >>>> + 1986, 1988-1989, 1991-1993, 1999-2000, 2007-2011 >> [...] >>> IIUC this would allow us to write 1986-2011 everywhere as the GDB >>> package was nontrivially modified each of these years. Just restating >>> Joseph. >> Not totally critical, but I am seduced. I found that the formatting >> of many copyright headers look a bit ugly before the list of years >> shown in the notice is long enough that "Free Software Foundation, Inc." >> would not fit on the rest of the line. >> > > I agree with making it 1986-2012 everywhere uniformly. > > For files with new code, it would be nice if the first year in the pair could be > the year of the file's creation - it's a little jarring to see something like > tic6x-tdep.c with a 1986 date at the top of it. On the other hand, a copyright > range like 2005-2012 makes it unclear if one is trying to say that that a particular > file was modified each year in the range, or that it's "inheriting" the range from GDB as a whole. Joel's list has holes in 1987, 1990-1991, 1994-1998, 2001-2006, inclusive. If we had consistently through the years since 1986 been updating the files' copyright years, even if the particular file that year list came from wasn't updated in the hole years, then there would have been no year-holes! From that, IMO, it follows that it should be okay to compress and get rid of the holes. But it does not follow that we could add back 1986 as earliest year with copyright-able content to every file in the tree. In my view, for files with new code, then the year should indeed by the year of the file's creation. However, if the new file with new code also includes copied code from other files (that is, it is not strictly new code), and the copied code is considerable copyright-able (e.g, more than a few obvious lines), then the copyright years should reflect the copyright years of the code copied from, because copyright does not apply to files as an atomic unit. This happen particularly frequently with new testsuite test files, where we most frequently just copy most of the test from some other existing file. That said, it may be worth asking the FSF. -- Pedro Alves ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 16:55 ` Pedro Alves @ 2012-01-04 17:17 ` Joseph S. Myers 2012-01-04 17:38 ` Alfred M. Szmidt 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Joseph S. Myers @ 2012-01-04 17:17 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Pedro Alves; +Cc: Stan Shebs, gdb-patches On Wed, 4 Jan 2012, Pedro Alves wrote: > That said, it may be worth asking the FSF. Yes, that may make sense. The rule for including intermediate years (before the rule that you can just add the new year to every file) used to be that the years to list were when a version, later released, was completed. It then changed to explain that you should add the new year - on the presumption that you have public version control so that every intermediate version is released, and with the rule that you only need to track when changes to the whole package were made, not individual files. Since GDB's version control history does not include the real history for older years - just imported snapshots / releases - it should probably be checked that there were indeed released versions of GDB that were completed in each year before 1999 that we wish to include implicitly in the simplified ranges. And it probably is worth checking with the FSF that using <first-year>-2012 is correct in that case, and for what <first-year> should be (my guess is that it's the first year in which a released version of GDB included any copyrightable content from which the file was derived, but maybe it will be OK just to put the first year for GDB everywhere). -- Joseph S. Myers joseph@codesourcery.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 17:17 ` Joseph S. Myers @ 2012-01-04 17:38 ` Alfred M. Szmidt 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Alfred M. Szmidt @ 2012-01-04 17:38 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Joseph S. Myers; +Cc: alves.ped, stanshebs, gdb-patches The rule for including intermediate years (before the rule that you can just add the new year to every file) used to be that the years to list were when a version, later released, was completed. It then changed to explain that you should add the new year - on the presumption that you have public version control so that every intermediate version is released, and with the rule that you only need to track when changes to the whole package were made, not individual files. Since GDB's version control history does not include the real history for older years - just imported snapshots / releases - it should probably be checked that there were indeed released versions of GDB that were completed in each year before 1999 that we wish to include implicitly in the simplified ranges. And it probably is worth checking with the FSF that using <first-year>-2012 is correct in that case, and for what <first-year> should be (my guess is that it's the first year in which a released version of GDB included any copyrightable content from which the file was derived, but maybe it will be OK just to put the first year for GDB everywhere). This might help, from the GNU maintainer guidelines: | To update the list of year numbers, add each year in which you have | made nontrivial changes to the package. (Here we assume you're using a | publicly accessible revision control server, so that every revision | installed is also immediately and automatically published.) When you | add the new year, it is not required to keep track of which files have | seen significant changes in the new year and which have not. It is | recommended and simpler to add the new year to all files in the | package, and be done with it for the rest of the year. | | Don't delete old year numbers, though; they are significant since | they indicate when older versions might theoretically go into the public | domain, if the movie companies don't continue buying laws to further | extend copyright. If you copy a file into the package from some other | program, keep the copyright years that come with the file. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 16:19 ` Stan Shebs 2012-01-04 16:43 ` Tom Tromey 2012-01-04 16:55 ` Pedro Alves @ 2012-01-04 17:28 ` Alfred M. Szmidt 2 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Alfred M. Szmidt @ 2012-01-04 17:28 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Stan Shebs; +Cc: gdb-patches On 1/4/12 1:46 AM, Joel Brobecker wrote: > Hello, > > I thought I was giong to do my best to forget about this as soon as > the copyright notices would be updated, but what do you guys think > of Jan's remark: > >>> + 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991-1993, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 >>> + >>> +... is abbreviated into: >>> + >>> + 1986, 1988-1989, 1991-1993, 1999-2000, 2007-2011 > [...] >> IIUC this would allow us to write 1986-2011 everywhere as the GDB >> package was nontrivially modified each of these years. Just restating >> Joseph. > Not totally critical, but I am seduced. I found that the formatting > of many copyright headers look a bit ugly before the list of years > shown in the notice is long enough that "Free Software Foundation, Inc." > would not fit on the rest of the line. > I agree with making it 1986-2012 everywhere uniformly. For files with new code, it would be nice if the first year in the pair could be the year of the file's creation - it's a little jarring to see something like tic6x-tdep.c with a 1986 date at the top of it. The creation date of a file might not coresspond to the year when the content of the file was written. If tic6x-tdep.c was created based on another files content, then it would be correct to add 1986 to the list of copyright years. On the other hand, a copyright range like 2005-2012 makes it unclear if one is trying to say that that a particular file was modified each year in the range, or that it's "inheriting" the range from GDB as a whole. AFAIK: The range is means that the copyright holder has asserted his rights as a copyright holder each year during that period. It has nothing to do with if the particular file was modified during that year. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-04 9:47 RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices Joel Brobecker 2012-01-04 16:10 ` Tom Tromey 2012-01-04 16:19 ` Stan Shebs @ 2012-01-06 6:23 ` Joel Brobecker 2012-01-27 9:23 ` Joel Brobecker 2 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Joel Brobecker @ 2012-01-06 6:23 UTC (permalink / raw) To: gdb-patches Hello again, Thanks a lot to all of you who answered. Very helpful. As usual when it comes to legal matters, I did not have a clear understanding of the all the ramifications. I have therefore sent the question to the FSF copyright clerk email address. One small clarification: The proposed change will simply shrink the copyright years into a single range, but it will not change the initial year recorded in each file. If that initial year is mistaken (in either direction), fixing that would need to be done on an individual basis after review. Now, wait and see... -- Joel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... 2012-01-06 6:23 ` Joel Brobecker @ 2012-01-27 9:23 ` Joel Brobecker 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Joel Brobecker @ 2012-01-27 9:23 UTC (permalink / raw) To: gdb-patches Hello again, > Thanks a lot to all of you who answered. Very helpful. As usual > when it comes to legal matters, I did not have a clear understanding > of the all the ramifications. I have therefore sent the question > to the FSF copyright clerk email address. > > One small clarification: The proposed change will simply shrink > the copyright years into a single range, but it will not change > the initial year recorded in each file. If that initial year is > mistaken (in either direction), fixing that would need to be done > on an individual basis after review. I just got an answer from the FSF (case [gnu.org #719834]), and it is fine to shrink the copyright year list into a single range, even if there are "holes" in the original year list. I will put this on my list of things to do sometime next month (which ironically is in a few days - where does time go?). -- Joel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2012-01-27 5:48 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 10+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2012-01-04 9:47 RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices Joel Brobecker 2012-01-04 16:10 ` Tom Tromey 2012-01-04 16:19 ` Stan Shebs 2012-01-04 16:43 ` Tom Tromey 2012-01-04 16:55 ` Pedro Alves 2012-01-04 17:17 ` Joseph S. Myers 2012-01-04 17:38 ` Alfred M. Szmidt 2012-01-04 17:28 ` Alfred M. Szmidt 2012-01-06 6:23 ` Joel Brobecker 2012-01-27 9:23 ` Joel Brobecker
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