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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 | ||
9 | For more detailed information on maintaining copyright, see the file | |
10 | "copyright" in this directory. | |
11 | ||
12 | The previous policy was more complex, but is now only of historical | |
13 | interest (see versions of this file from before 2009). | |
14 | ||
15 | The refcards in etc/refcards can print only the latest copyright year, | |
16 | but should keep the full list in a comment in the source. | |
17 | ||
a85732e6 | 18 | |
d0278ce8 | 19 | "Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs |
631e2c0f | 20 | since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years[1]. We don't |
d0278ce8 TTN |
21 | need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years. |
22 | It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!). | |
21ac0f63 | 23 | |
d0278ce8 TTN |
24 | For those files that have been added since then, we should add |
25 | the year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years." | |
21ac0f63 | 26 | |
d0278ce8 | 27 | --RMS, 2005-07-13 |
a85732e6 | 28 | |
631e2c0f GM |
29 | [1] Note that this includes 2001 - see |
30 | <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2006-12/msg00119.html> |