Re: d/copyright years when upstream does not use years?

* Sean Whitton <[email protected]> [260828 08:56]:
> The Wanderer [21/Aug  2:47pm -04] wrote:
> > Unless I'm very much mistaken (which is always possible), the date of a
> > copyright determines when that copyright will expire, and the
> > copyrighted material will enter the public domain.
> >
> > AFAIK, we're well short of the first code that could still run on modern
> > hardware entering the public domain - but it will presumably happen
> > eventually, and having the copyright dates for the material in question
> > could be valuable when that "eventually" becomes "currently". It's
> > potentially even more relevant for non-code data, because that may be
> > much more likely to still be usable (even if by newer code) on future
> > hardware.
> 
> Right.  So good free software citizenship requires, I think, supplying
> the years, with our future descendents in mind.

To be clear, supplying an _appropriate_ year, not just updating the year
in every file for every upload to the archive.  That would just make a
lot more work for someone later on trying to enforce a copyright or
trying to show a copyright had expired, in addition to just being busy
work for the Debian maintainer.

TBH, (I am not a lawyer) if Debian as a redistributor of someone else's
software adds dates to copyright notices, but either does not send them
back upstream or upstream refuses to accept them, I am dubious that the
dates would have _any bearing at all_ in a legal battle.  The only thing
adding a date would protect would be changes made by Debian, not the
original upstream code (and only if the dates were added in a separate
copyright notice for and by the persons making the changes).

To put it another way, I do not believe that Debian, as a redistributor,
can in any way make changes to upstream's copyright or license.  Adding
a date to upstream's copyright notice is one such change that would (in
my layman's opinion) be ineffectual in a legal battle.

...Marvin