Re: Removal of copyright years

Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> Thu, 06 Feb 2025 18:12:32 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<2585975.Y4W8hZkJsM@soren-desktop>

On Thursday, February 6, 2025 5:08:06 PM MST Ben Ramsey wrote:
> > On Feb 6, 2025, at 13:25, Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 
> > In my opinion, no copyright statement is complete without a year range,
> > because this tells you when the copyright would be expected to expire. 
> > Number 2 tells you when the copyright on the totality of the files expires.
> >  Number 3 tells you the range of years when the copyright expires on parts
> > of the contained work.  It is left to the user to determine when copyright
> > expires for a particular file if they need to know that information.
> The minimum standard for copyright term in the Berne Convention is life of the
> author plus 50 years. Of the 195 countries in the world, 181 are parties to
> the Berne Convention. Some countries go well beyond the minimum; in the US,
> it’s 70 years after the author’s death.
> 
> Berne also introduced the concept that authors receive copyright protection
> the moment the work is “fixed,” and there’s no need to register for copyright
> or even put a copyright notice on the work.
> 
> I don’t think having the year(s) listed matters anymore. What matters is the
> year of death of the author. (A morbid thought, I know.)

You make a good point.  Although I will probably still prefer to include copyright years on 
projects where I am upstream, I won’t feel so strongly against those who do otherwise.

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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