I would also be in favour of removing the dates. For actively developed
software, copyright expiry is a sort of fantasy concept. By the time author 1
has been dead for 70 years, the software has probably had thousands of authors
who remain alive. I only use dates like that to get a rough idea of who was
working on a project when, in which case (as you say) they should be kept
updated. But I don't think it serves any real utility.
Best wishes,
Dan
On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 10:20 AM Tom Schwindl <schwindl_AT_posteo.de> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've recently (well, a few days/weeks ago) read quite a few discussions on
> a wide variety of mailing lists about whether to remove the range of years
> from the copyright notices or keep them. Since a few of our LICENSE files are
> out of date too, I wonder if there is a consensus on what to do.
> Should we update them and do the usual "bump the year" dance?
> Or should we completely drop them and stop worrying.
> I do not have strong opinions on this, but I think if the years are stated,
> they should at least be correct.
>
> I like to link to the musl discussion here since they go into more depth on the
> topic. Unfortunately, I think they didn't come to a conclusion:
>
> <https://www.openwall.com/lists/musl/2023/01/09/4>
>
> The reason why I bring this up is that I think it's irritating, or at least
> inconsistent, if a project is actively developed but the LICENSE file states
> something like "(c) 2010-2015".
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Tom Schwindl
>
Received on Wed Feb 08 2023 - 11:49:30 CET