IANAL but AIUI the copyright notice should reflect the dates of significant contributions to the work. So for the new file it must contain the current year, for the modification the notice should be changed if your new contribution is significant. The definition of significant, of course, varies by lawyer :-)
FWIW I have a code template that attaches an appropriate notice to new files and I try to remember to update the notice for files that I am actively modifying. I do not believe changes to other files as a result of automatic refactoring (e.g. in response to a method rename) count as significant contribution and so would not update their dates. For the lawyers, the full history is available from SVN. It makes life much easier for us all if all parts of a change are committed together. This is one of the big advantages of SVN over CVS as it maintains history across the tree rather than by file. No apologies needed, ensuring appropriate IP oversight is a critical part of participation in an Apache project. -- Jeremy Geoffrey Winn wrote: > Looking at the existing source file (C++ in my case) they all seem to > contain a copyright statement as follows. > > "Copyright 2005 The Apache Software Foundation or its licensors, as > applicable." > > If I want to create a new file do I include that exact statement or the > 2006 > variant of it? > > Similarly, if I modify an existing file, do I need to modify the copyright > line. > > Apologies for making an issue of this, but in a previous life I spent > several days dealing with lawyers over what constituted a "correct" > copyright statement. > > Regards, > > Geoff. >
