I’ve seen some projects that – with each new year – start to change all files in their source-tree to update the copyright year.
Isn’t this just pushing hot air on a level of magnitude? AFAIK:
- Copyright year is based on relevant changes of a work (also) – not only because of a trivial change of the copyright year in a file-header that is the only change.
- Changing nearly all files without an actual need brings the code out of order in version control.
I can’t help myself but have problems to see why someone wants to do such superfluous stuff, albeit I know some projects are doing this (for example Zend Framework 1 in 2012).
Is there any use in changing the copyright year in each file only because Jan 1st has passed?
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“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.” (quote source)
In one of my past projects, we once got such kind of requirement. It has been solved once and forever by inserting a “copyright placeholder” into source code stored under version control:
// %%COPYRIGHT PLACEHOLDER%%
Whenever any change in that text was required, for whatever reason, we simply modified copyright template containing actual copyright text in our release scripts, so that published code has gotten that template inserted instead of placeholder.
Easy peasy, and programmers didn’t waste their time trying to figure is there any use in changing the copyright.
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Actually the updating of the headers with copyright information is a form of fraud.
You cannot claim that a work you made in 2010 has been made in 2014.
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