Peter Pentchev <[email protected]> writes: > On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 02:08:57PM +0200, Agathe Porte wrote: >> Hello, >> >> (please keep me Cc'ed, not subscribed to the list) >> >> TL;DR: copyright years are a mess, do we really want to force copyright >> years using a lintian tag and force debian maintainers to update their >> d/copyright for d/* each year? I propose we rework these lintian tags, I >> can do the work but wanted to discuss it on -devel first. > > First off, yay, somebody else who likes copyright notices without years :) > > So IMHO there are both good and bad things in copyright notices that > do not include years: > - good thing: you don't need to update it each year, and it does not > get very, very long as you skip a year every now and then :) > - bad thing: it seems that, at least in the United States, such > a copyright notice may not be recognized in court
Copyright attaches even if you do not have a copyright notice. A year makes it more clear when it applies, so enforcement gets easier if you can point to it. Cheers, Walter Landry
