Ashok Narayanan wrote:
>
> Well, neither do I, but the deal is that you need to retain the
> earliest copyright date in your copyright notice to establish date of
> code creation.
Computer programs are kind of odd this way. Copyright law says that the
year has to be the date of first publication. Like many other artistic
expressions, computer programs continuously evolve, yet unlike
expressions in other media they are routinely published and republished
_while_ they evolve. There is no single "date of first publication."
In practical terms, the form "Copyright (c) 1998-2000" would probably be
the simplest and safest. Even better, use the real copyright symbol
(c-in-a-circle) instead of the (c) fakery, unless there are
international character set issues that prevent this.
> This prevents somebody from taking code from you and
> changing it, claiming that he changed it before your copyright was
> enforced. It didn't make much sense to me, either, but so we are told
> by the lawyers and so we shall do....
Your lawyers didn't explain things very well, then.
In the US (and "most other countries", according to the Copyright FAQ),
copyright is an automatic benefit given to any new creative work. (This
wasn't always the case, which has helped to confuse the issue.)
No one can legally "take your code and change it" because you leave off
the copyright notice. The only reason to include a proper copyright
notice is so that the code thief can't claim innocent infringement when
you sue them. Notices are trivial to add to a program, so by
convention, we use them; it's cheap insurance.
--
= Warren Young: www.cyberport.com/~tangent | Yesterday it worked.
= ICBM Address: 36.8274040N, 108.0204086W, | Today it is not working.
= alt. 1714m | Windows is like that.
