Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> writes:
> How about deriving the --version output from the copyright notice, for
> those programs that consist of a single file and that are not written in C?
[...]
> + # Extract the last year from this file's copyright notice.
> + sed_extract_last_year='s/^.*\([0-9]\{4\}\)[^0-9]*$/\1/'
> + year=`sed -n -e /Copyright/p < "$progname" | sed -e 1q | sed -e
> "$sed_extract_last_year"`
[...]
>
> Advantage: Zero maintenance cost, as we rely on 'update-copyright' for the
> copyright notice.
>
> Disadvantage: It's a violation of the boundary between program code and
> meta-information.
>
> What do you think? Should we do this?
Seems fine to me unless anyone else disagrees. Would take a few more
lines in Perl though, but not too bad.
As far as I'm aware copyright in the US and EU expires a certain number
of years after the author dies (though perhaps assignment to others, FSF
in this case, complicates that). So I don't think the violation between
program code and meta-information should have a meaningful impact.
Not a lawyer, of course, so my word doesn't mean much.
Collin
