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

Russ Allbery wrote:
>Ansgar <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> I don't think it matters for any recent code? Copyright usually expires
>> x years after the authors death, so creation date isn't that relevant.
>
>Copyright in the US for works for hire expires after 95 years from its
>first publication. That's a common case for a lot of software.

But this just leads to the next question: you would also need to know whether the work was created in the US or elsewhere, and whether it was a work for hire or not. This is not documented by Debian either and not trivial to find out. And an expiration of 95 years leaves so much time for copyright laws to change, that spending Debian's resources to document this or even just years in detail seems not worth it to me.

Ansgar