admin/notes/years

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   3   THIS DOCUMENT IS UNDER REVIEW.
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   5   DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS -- THEY ARE NOT CORRECT.
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   8 How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs
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  11 Principle: Individual files need to have the year of the release
  12            in the copyright notice if there is significant change.
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  15 Practice:
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  17 - individual files
  18   - each must be examined, along w/ its history, by a human
  19   - automated tools facilitate but can never replace this process
  20
  21 - year of the release
  22   - may be different from year of file introduction,
  23     or year of last significant change
  24   - sometimes the release year slips, leaving a file w/ prematurely
  25     marked release year => need update (e.g., s/2004/2005/ for Emacs 22)
  26   - intervening years (between releases) are not valid and may cause
  27     embarrassment later in case of dispute => remove (however, see next)
  28   - years for new files (merged, contributed) that have been separately
  29     published are valid even if between releases => leave alone
  30
  31 - significant change
  32   - insignificant
  33     - whitespace
  34     - copyright notice
  35     - version control tags
  36     - simple var/func renaming
  37     - in-file reorganization/reordering
  38     - typos
  39     - small bugfixes
  40     - small docfixes
  41     - filename renaming
  42   - most everything else is significant
  43     - change to interface
  44     - change in functionality
  45     - new file
  46   - many small changes may be significant in aggregate
  47
  48 - when in doubt, ask (and update these guidelines -- thanks!)
  49
  50 - sometimes people make mistakes
  51   - if they have not read these guidelines, point them here
  52   - if the guidelines are not helpful, improve the guidelines