-- Colin Guthrie <[email protected]> wrote (on Thursday, 17 March 2011, 12:04 PM +0000): > I noticed (due to massive file churn in our VCS after importing the > latest ZF release) that many files have had their copyright date changed > to 2011. > > While this is all well and good, is it actually valid to do so without > actually making any other change to the file? > > I mean, if copyright can be extended simply by changing the copyright > date in it's header does that not mean that e.g. copyright on an > artistic work could last forever if the owners just change the date > every year? (this may not apply to code per se - more a general question) > > I have a script that I run at year end on our code that diligently > checks to see if a file has been edited in the last year and only amends > the copyright date in the header based on this check (which uses our VCS > history). This seems to me to be "correct" in the sense that the year in > the preamble will only be modified to reflect when the file was last > changed, but obviously it's more complex than a blanket change. > > This is really an open question about how to deal with copyright > headers. Opinions welcome :)
In this case, the copyright applies to the project as a whole, not the individual files within the project. As such, as long as the project is active, the copyrights will be updated at the beginning of each year. -- Matthew Weier O'Phinney Project Lead | [email protected] Zend Framework | http://framework.zend.com/ PGP key: http://framework.zend.com/zf-matthew-pgp-key.asc -- List: [email protected] Info: http://framework.zend.com/archives Unsubscribe: [email protected]
