GNU bug report logs - #31694
man page copyright notice

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Message #7 received at control <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: bill-auger <bill-auger <at> peers.community>, 31694-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#31694: man page copyright notice
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2018 10:59:12 -0500

tag 31694 notabug
thanks

On 06/02/2018 05:43 PM, bill-auger wrote:
> i noticed the copyright in the sed man page has "Copyright ©2017 Free
> Software Foundation, Inc."
> 
> according to GNU policy[1] it should list each year that some
> modification was made

Actually, GNU policy is that _source_ files should list years that a 
modification was made (either to that file alone, or a range of years 
that any file in the project was modified even if that particular file 
was not otherwise modified; the range option being a lot easier to 
produce).

But if you go on to the end of the section, it says that for --help 
output (which in turn feeds the man page):

"Sometimes a program has an overall copyright notice that refers to the 
whole program. It might be in the README file, or it might be displayed 
when the program starts up. This copyright notice should mention the 
year of completion of the most recent major version; it can mention 
years of completion of previous major versions, but that is optional."

Thus, there is no reason for the man page output to list all years; it 
is sufficient (and compliant with GNU Coding Standards) to list only the 
year of the current release.

> [1]: https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html
> 

As such, I'm closing this as not a bug.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

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