[bpt/emacs.git] / admin / notes / years

HOW TO MAINTAIN COPYRIGHT YEARS FOR GNU EMACS

Maintaining copyright years is now very simple: every time a new year
rolls around, add that year to every FSF (and AIST) copyright notice.

There's no need to worry about whether an individual file has changed
in a given year - it's sufficient that Emacs as a whole has changed.

Therefore the years are updated en-masse near the start of each year,
so basically there is no need for most people to do any updating of them.

The current (in 2011) version of "Information for Maintainers of GNU
Software" (see that document for more details) says that it is OK to use
ranges in copyright years, so in early 2011 the years were changed to use
ranges, which occupy less space and do not grow in length every year.

For more detailed information on maintaining copyright, see the file
"copyright" in this directory.

The previous policy was more complex, but is now only of historical
interest (see versions of this file from before 2009).

The refcards in etc/refcards can print only the latest copyright year,
but should keep the full list in a comment in the source.


"Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs
 since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years[1].  We don't
 need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years.
 It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!).
  
 For those files that have been added since then, we should add
 the year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years."
  
 --RMS, 2005-07-13

[1] Note that this includes 2001 - see
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-12/msg00119.html>
Commit	Line	Data
21ac0f63 GM	1	HOW TO MAINTAIN COPYRIGHT YEARS FOR GNU EMACS
	2
	3	Maintaining copyright years is now very simple: every time a new year
6bbd9b32	4	rolls around, add that year to every FSF (and AIST) copyright notice.
21ac0f63 GM	5
	6	There's no need to worry about whether an individual file has changed
	7	in a given year - it's sufficient that Emacs as a whole has changed.
	8
f74c8aeb GM	9	Therefore the years are updated en-masse near the start of each year,
	10	so basically there is no need for most people to do any updating of them.
	11
	12	The current (in 2011) version of "Information for Maintainers of GNU
	13	Software" (see that document for more details) says that it is OK to use
	14	ranges in copyright years, so in early 2011 the years were changed to use
	15	ranges, which occupy less space and do not grow in length every year.
	16
21ac0f63 GM	17	For more detailed information on maintaining copyright, see the file
	18	"copyright" in this directory.
	19
	20	The previous policy was more complex, but is now only of historical
	21	interest (see versions of this file from before 2009).
	22
	23	The refcards in etc/refcards can print only the latest copyright year,
	24	but should keep the full list in a comment in the source.
	25
a85732e6	26
d0278ce8	27	"Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs
631e2c0f	28	since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years[1]. We don't
d0278ce8 TTN	29	need to check whether that file was changed in those years.
d0278ce8 TTN	30	It's sufficient that Emacs was changed in those years (and it was!).
21ac0f63	31
d0278ce8 TTN	32	For those files that have been added since then, we should add
d0278ce8 TTN	33	the year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years."
21ac0f63	34
d0278ce8	35	--RMS, 2005-07-13
a85732e6	36
631e2c0f GM	37	[1] Note that this includes 2001 - see
631e2c0f GM	38	<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-12/msg00119.html>