Re: updating copyright years

[Joel E. Denny]

On Mon, 3 Aug 2009, Joel E. Denny wrote:

> > Also, I posted some major changes to update-copyright here:
> > 
> >   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2009-07/msg00135.html
> 
> I found a bug in that code, which the following patch fixes.
> 
> >From 1e91305468e96d8eea16a151fc7b63745d66b47b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Joel E. Denny <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 20:05:50 -0400
> Subject: [PATCH] update-copyright: fix bug for 2-digit last year and add tests
> 
> * build-aux/update-copyright: Fix bug.
> Use UPDATE_COPYRIGHT_YEAR from environment as current year if
> specified.
> * modules/update-copyright-tests: New
> * tests/test-update-copyright.sh: New.

I just ran update-copyright on gnulib.  It warns about a long list of 
files.  There are various problems:

1. "@copyright{}" or "&copy;" instead of "(C)".

2. No "(C)" after "Copyright".

3. No ", Inc." (or just no comma) at the end of "Free Software 
Foundation".  Even update-copyright itself does this.

4. Only a space rather than a comma or dash between some copyright years.

5. Inconsistent line prefix.  In many cases, it's a C-style comment such 
that "/*" appears only on the first line.  In some cases, it's just 
inconsistent indentation.

6. FSF is not the copyright holder.

7. "Copyright" appears but no copyright statement.

In my opinion, update-copyright should be extended to handle #1.  
However, the more lenient we are, the more risk we'll have of quietly 
changing something that isn't an FSF copyright statement, so I feel that 
files that have any of #2-#5 should be adjusted.  An update-copyright 
makefile target can be added that omits files that intentionally have #6 
or #7.