Re: Adding missing copyright years

[Nick Roberts]

 >     This can't be done completely mechanically, since one has to check
 >     when the last copyrightable changes (and not all changes are
 >     copyrightable) have been, correct?
 > 
 > That's correct, aside from one subtle point.  It's not that "not all
 > changes are copyrightable" but rather that "not all changes are big
 > enough to count for copyright purposes".  So the question, for each
 > year, is "were substantial changes made during that year".  If yes,
 > that year should be mentioned.
 > 
 > Substantial means adding up to more than 10-15 lines of total change.

Trying to reduce it to a formula for files whose history that we're
not familiar with:

e.g choosing cmacexp.el at random

cvs annotate cmacexp.el > files.ann

grep "..-...-05" cmacexp.ann | wc
     13     104     962

13 < 15 => don't add copyright year.

What are the consequences of adding a year where no copyrightable changes
were made? Presumably this is less serious than not adding a year where
such changes were made.

How about developing a script to update these changes automatically?

Nick