Re: copyright in Pear code

While I know this group doesnt particular love the FSF one thing they understand well is copyright and software. Here is what they have to say on the matter. A copyright notice looks like this: Copyright year1, year2, year3 copyright-holder The list of year numbers should include each year in which you finished preparing a version which was actually released, and which was an ancestor of the current version. Please reread the paragraph above, slowly and carefully. It is important to understand that rule precisely, much as you would understand a complicated C statement in order to hand-simulate it. This list is not a list of years in which versions were released. It is a list of years in which versions, later released, were completed. So if you finish a version on Dec 31, 1994 and release it on Jan 1, 1995, this version requires the inclusion of 1994, but doesn't require the inclusion of 1995. Do not abbreviate the year list using a range; do not write `1996--1998' instead of `1996, 1997, 1998'. The versions that matter, for purposes of this list, are versions that were ancestors of the current version. So if you made a temporary branch in maintenance, and worked on branches A and B in parallel, then each branch would have its own list of years, which is based on the versions released in that branch. A version in branch A need not be reflected in the list of years for branch B, and vice versa. However, if you copy code from branch A into branch B, the years for branch A (or at least, for the parts that you copied into branch B) do need to appear in the list in branch B, because now they are ancestors of branch B. Derek Neighbors GNU Enterprise http://www.gnue.org derek@gnue.org Colin Viebrock wrote:

[Wed, 10 Jan 2001] Stig S. Bakken said:

And I just updated the files. :-)

This is obviously going to be an issue again in 350-some odd days. Is there some phrase we can use that will cover our butts in the future too, without having to update every file? I'm assuming this is an issue for all the files in the php4 tree also. - Colin