Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Nick Roberts]

David Kastrup writes:
 > > Trying to reduce it to a formula for files whose history that we're
 > > not familiar with:
 > >
 > > e.g choosing cmacexp.el at random
 > >
 > > cvs annotate cmacexp.el > files.ann

I mean cvs annotate cmacexp.el > cmacexp.ann

 > >   
 > > grep "..-...-05" cmacexp.ann | wc
 > >      13     104     962
 > >
 > > 13 < 15 => don't add copyright year.
 > >
 > > What are the consequences of adding a year where no copyrightable changes
 > > were made? Presumably this is less serious than not adding a year where
 > > such changes were made.
 > >
 > > How about developing a script to update these changes automatically?
 > 
 > Refilling a paragraph, reindenting and similar are purely mechanical
 > (non-copyrightable) changes with possibly large numbers of changed
 > lines.

These can only make the number greater so the conclusion for the above example
would still be correct. Also thats why I ask what are the consequences of
adding a year where no copyrightable changes were made.

It seems sensible to semi-automate the process at least. To use fashionable
language, I was trying to extablish best practice for that process.

Nick