1 How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs
4 Principle: Individual files need to have the year of the release
5 in the copyright notice if there is significant change.
11 - each must be examined, along w/ its history, by a human
12 - automated tools facilitate but can never replace this process
15 - may be different from year of file introduction,
16 or year of last significant change
17 - sometimes the release year slips, leaving a file w/ prematurely
18 marked release year => need update (e.g., s/2004/2005/ for Emacs 22)
19 - intervening years (between releases) are not valid and may cause
20 embarrassment later in case of dispute => remove (however, see next)
21 - years for new files (merged, contributed) that have been separately
22 published are valid even if between releases => leave alone
28 - version control tags
29 - simple var/func renaming
30 - in-file reorganization/reordering
35 - most everything else is significant
37 - change in functionality
39 - many small changes may be significant in aggregate
41 - when in doubt, ask (and update these guidelines -- thanks!)
43 - sometimes people make mistakes
44 - if they have not read these guidelines, point them here
45 - if the guidelines are not helpful, improve the guidelines