Re: bad copyright years

[Glenn Morris]

Nick Roberts wrote:

> And I thought we said that CC mode was added to Emacs in 1992, yet e.g
>
> ;;; cc-langs.el --- language specific settings for CC Mode
>
> ;; Copyright (C) 1985, 1987, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998,
> ;;   1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006  Free Software
> ;;   Foundation, Inc.
>
> i.e the years before 1992 are still in the header

Yes, this is fine. Presumably cc-mode was released as a separate
package several times before it was added to Emacs. So in 1992 the
header may have looked like:

1985, 1987, 1992  John Smith

Then when the copyright got assigned to the FSF in 1992, this changes
to become:

1985, 1987, 1992  FSF

The older years do not get removed, you just change the copyright
holder.

> Q. to RMS: What *should* the header for t-mouse.el look like?
>
> Currently:
>
> ;; Copyright (C) 1994,1995 Alessandro Rubini <address@hidden>
> ;;               parts are by Ian T Zimmermann <address@hidden>, 1995,1998
> ;; Copyright (C) 2006
> ;; Free Software Foundation, Inc.

If I may answer, then normally you remove the old names and replace
them with FSF, but keep the old dates. So it would look like:

1994, 1995, 1998, 2006 FSF

I suppose there are corner cases when things may be different.