Run through of fix-copyright-headers.py #5519

This script updates headers to correct year.

What about waiting for 12 days? ;-)

The script only updates the files that are changed this year. That is why we should merge this before the new year :)

ACK

NACK, try again in a few months.

I know I just merged #5470 and #5494, but my intention was not to encourage regular mass updates to the headers. An infinite number of these pulls could be generated. I'd prefer waiting with this until well into 2015, as it's especially in the beginning of the year that people forget it.

On a higher level: why do we have years in the copyright headers per file at all?

Git provides an exact history of who contributed what, when. The possibility of a script like this at all shows that is isn't necessary. If we can do it, a law firm can too, in the oft case that it would ever be necessary.

@laanwj +1 A good article on the topic is here: http://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2012/ManagingCopyrightInformation.html Their recommended license notice for the "centralized" model of copyright notice is:

This file is part of Foo Project. It is subject to the license terms in the LICENSE file found in the top-level directory of this distribution and at http://www.example.org/foo/license.html. No part of Foo Project, including this file, may be copied, modified, propagated, or distributed except according to the terms contained in the LICENSE file.

You may optionally include a per-file copyright notice with a date, but that's not strictly required given DVCS systems, particularly as we're permissively licensed anyway and don't have contributor agreements.

So if we remove the years and keep the reference to the LICENSE file that'd be enough. Great! Every bit of micro-management avoided is a win.

Who would have thought giving data away with almost no strings attached would be so easy?

On 22 December 2014 10:34:32 GMT-05:00, "Wladimir J. van der Laan" notifications@github.com wrote:

So if we remove the years and keep the reference to the LICENSE file that'd be enough. Great! Every bit of micro-management saved is a win.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #5519 (comment)

@petertodd So we should be able to turn this

// Copyright (c) 2010 Satoshi Nakamoto
// Copyright (c) 2009-2014 The Bitcoin Core developers
// Distributed under the MIT software license, see the accompanying
// file COPYING or http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php.

into just this ?

// Distributed under the MIT software license, see the accompanying
// file COPYING or http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php.

This would certainly simplify everything. I am all for it :)

@fanquake +1 and an update to the COPYING file still mentioning Satoshi, The Bitcoin Core developers and with updated years?

I'd say keep the names, remove the dates.

Ask a lawyer rather than guessing. We have plenty of them around the bitcoin space, including working at the Bitcoin Foundation.

Ok, closing this one at least.