comparison admin/notes/years @ 75466:4fca1052121f

Move some stuff to new file "copyright".

75465:34448acdaf7e

How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs


"Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs
 since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years[1].  We don't
 need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years.
 It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!).

For the refcards under etc/, it's ok to simply use the latest year
(typically in a `\def\year{YEAR}' expression) for the rendered copyright
notice, while maintaining the full list of years in the copyright notice
in the comments.


Please fix or report any non-trivial files that have "odd" copyright
notices.  This includes missing copyright notices, and copyright
holders other than FSF (or AIST in some cases).  In most cases,
individual authors should not appear in copyright statements.  Either
the copyright has been assigned (check copyright.list) to the FSF (in
which case the original author should be removed and the year(s)
transferred to the FSF); or else it is possible the file should not be
in Emacs at all (please report!).

When updating the copyright in a file (eg a .tex file) that generates
another file distributed with Emacs, don't forget to check in a
regenerated version of the target file.

For auto-generated files (eg ldefs-boot.el), RMS says (20061211,
private mail): "Since they are automatically generated, it doesn't
really matter what they say."

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Following is the policy that we tried to write down one time (mid 2005).

75466:4fca1052121f

How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs
  (see also file "copyright" in this directory)

"Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs
 since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years[1].  We don't
 need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years.
 It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!).

For the refcards under etc/, it's ok to simply use the latest year
(typically in a `\def\year{YEAR}' expression) for the rendered copyright
notice, while maintaining the full list of years in the copyright notice
in the comments.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Following is the policy that we tried to write down one time (mid 2005).