admin/notes/years

   1 How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs
   2
   3
   4 Principle: Individual files need to have the year of the release
   5            in the copyright notice if there is significant change.
   6
   7
   8 Practice:
   9
  10 - individual files
  11   - each must be examined, along w/ its history, by a human
  12   - automated tools facilitate but can never replace this process
  13
  14 - year of the release
  15   - may be different from year of file introduction,
  16     or year of last significant change
  17   - sometimes the release year slips, leaving a file w/ prematurely
  18     marked release year => need update (e.g., s/2004/2005/ for Emacs 22)
  19   - intervening years (between releases) are not valid and may cause
  20     embarrassment later in case of dispute => remove (however, see next)
  21   - years for new files (merged, contributed) that have been separately
  22     published are valid even if between releases => leave alone
  23
  24 - significant change
  25   - insignificant
  26     - whitespace
  27     - copyright notice
  28     - version control tags
  29     - simple var/func renaming
  30     - in-file reorganization/reordering
  31     - typos
  32     - small bugfixes
  33     - small docfixes
  34     - filename renaming
  35   - most everything else is significant
  36     - change to interface
  37     - change in functionality
  38     - new file
  39   - many small changes may be significant in aggregate
  40
  41 - when in doubt, ask (and update these guidelines -- thanks!)
  42
  43 - sometimes people make mistakes
  44   - if they have not read these guidelines, point them here
  45   - if the guidelines are not helpful, improve the guidelines