copyright years are not up-to-date

On Tue, Jan 15, 2008 at 23:40:01 -0000, Mutt wrote:
>  Many copyright years in source files and in "mutt -v" / "mutt -vv" output
>  are not up-to-date...

Well, common understanding is at least that if a file wasn't modified
this year, neiter should the copyright be. At least that's what I was
told.

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, Mutt wrote:

> #3016: copyright years are not up-to-date
>
> Comment (by Moritz Barsnick):
>
> {{{
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2008 at 23:40:01 -0000, Mutt wrote:
> >  Many copyright years in source files and in "mutt -v" / "mutt -vv"
> output
> >  are not up-to-date...
>
> Well, common understanding is at least that if a file wasn't modified
> this year, neiter should the copyright be. At least that's what I was
> told.

That's what I do.  If there's a copyright notice in each file, the 
understanding is that the file's content is separately reusable.
(This doesn't seem to stop people from removing the copyright notice and, 
for instance, putting a GPL notice at the top ;-)

Note that several files have been modified this year, and the copyright notice hasn't been updated (and ditto for previous years: I've looked at a few .c files, and the last year of their copyright noticed was either 2000 or 2002, though they have probably been modified, at least some of them).

Also, the FSF agreed that it is OK to update the year of every file of the project when one of them is modified (just like assuming that the copyright notice is attached to the project instead of each file -- this makes sense as the organization into files is mainly technical and one can move some part of the code from some file to another one).

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, Mutt wrote:

> #3016: copyright years are not up-to-date
>
> Comment (by vinc17):
>
> Note that several files have been modified this year, and the copyright
> notice hasn't been updated (and ditto for previous years: I've looked at a
> few .c files, and the last year of their copyright noticed was either 2000
> or 2002, though they have probably been modified, at least some of them).

The change history can easily show this.  Normal practice is to update
copyright notice in a file at the time when it is changed.

> Also, the FSF agreed that it is OK to update the year of every file of the
> project when one of them is modified (just like assuming that the
> copyright notice is attached to the project instead of each file -- this
> makes sense as the organization into files is mainly technical and one can
> move some part of the code from some file to another one).

In this regard, I'm only inclined to follow FSF's guidance if it is a GNU 
project (where they actually have some right to insist on variations from
normal practice).  Aside from that, it's just another opinion.