Re: Copyright notices

[Nick Roberts]

 >     It occurs to me that if there isn't a release until 2006 (or
 >     later!) then all the files will need to be changed again.  Now
 >     that the legal advice suggests a straightforward solution perhaps
 >     this process could (ultimately) be scripted.
 > 
 > It could be so.

There are about 2000 files with copyright notices.  If these are all done
manually, changing them twice seems to me to be an inefficient way of working.
If, as Stefan suggests, only those changed in 2006 need their copyright changed
again then maybe it's not so bad.

 >     perhaps all files could display the _same_ copyright notice (apart from
 >     comment delimiters) for the period from the start of Emacs (1985?) to
 >     the present?
 > 
 > No, because most files were added to Emacs later than 1985, and some of them
 > have years when they were released by their authors bevore they were added
 > to Emacs.

Yes, I see its less straightforward than I had hoped.

 > A script to add a certain year to all files in a certain directory,
 > or to the files that are specified for it, would do the job.
 > Doing this is not quite trivial, but not terribly hard.
 >
 > Would you like to write it?

I'll start thinking about how to do it.  Since the copyright notices won't be
all the same any script must be able to handle the differences.  I'm thinking
of something that keeps the user in the loop, like query replace or ediff,
where he will be presented with a proposed change which he can decline
or accept.

Nick