Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Paul Eggert]

On 10/15/2015 08:58 AM, David Kastrup wrote:
> What actually annoyed me is that the various NEWS files are all also
> marked (c) 2015 in spite of not being really a part of the current
> Emacs.

This is according to US copyright law. A work that consists of many 
parts can have its copyright notice reproduced on each part, even the 
parts that don't change from one version to the next.

In the old days we kept track of each file's copyright years separately, 
and recorded exactly which years that file changed. Copyright law allows 
this older practice too, but it was more of a hassle and we went with a 
simpler approach. I would not like to go back.

> Granted, that did not annoy me as much for licensing reasons as
> it did for making it unable to get a rough estimate when the various
> major versions of Emacs had been released.

Yes, I've also run afoul of that. I attempted to help out by installing 
the attached patch. Some of this is from my vague recollections, some 
from random places on the Internet, and quite possibly I've made 
transcription errors; corrections and improvements are welcome.

0001-New-file-etc-HISTORY.patch
Description: Text Data