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THIS DOCUMENT IS UNDER REVIEW.
DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS -- THEY ARE NOT CORRECT.
How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs
Principle: Individual files need to have the year of the release
in the copyright notice if there is significant change.
Practice:
- individual files
- each must be examined, along w/ its history, by a human
- automated tools facilitate but can never replace this process
- year of the release
- may be different from year of file introduction,
or year of last significant change
- sometimes the release year slips, leaving a file w/ prematurely
marked release year => need update (e.g., s/2004/2005/ for Emacs 22)
- intervening years (between releases) are not valid and may cause
embarrassment later in case of dispute => remove (however, see next)
- years for new files (merged, contributed) that have been separately
published are valid even if between releases => leave alone
- significant change
- insignificant
- whitespace
- copyright notice
- version control tags
- simple var/func renaming
- in-file reorganization/reordering
- typos
- small bugfixes
- small docfixes
- filename renaming
- most everything else is significant
- change to interface
- change in functionality
- new file
- many small changes may be significant in aggregate
- when in doubt, ask (and update these guidelines -- thanks!)
- sometimes people make mistakes
- if they have not read these guidelines, point them here
- if the guidelines are not helpful, improve the guidelines
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