From maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch  Sat Feb 25 21:17:42 2017
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch (Martin Maechler)
Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2017 21:17:42 +0100
Subject: [Rd] Update copyright year in manuals
In-Reply-To: <20170224161444.GE18457@ofb.net>
References: <56b65b53-6369-882e-a7f8-2a7c5e9f4e95@helsinki.fi>
	<22702.61518.509694.132082@stat.math.ethz.ch>
	<20170224161444.GE18457@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <22705.58982.238739.460919@stat.math.ethz.ch>


> On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 03:23:10PM +0100, Martin Maechler wrote:
> > >>>>> Mikko Korpela <mikko.korpela at helsinki.fi>
> > >>>>>     on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 14:02:58 +0200 writes:
> > 
> >     > With new R releases soon to come, I suggest updating the
> >     > Rcopyright macro in "doc/manual/R-defs.texi" to use year
> >     > 2017.
> > 
> > Now this is an e-mail that *REALLY* does not fit to the R-devel
> > mailing list ... even though it is very very slightly related to
> > the R sources.
> > 
> > We do *not* want noise on R-devel, please.
> > 
> > (and let's continue this issue in private if you want)
> > Martin

> Martin, I'm confused. Should Mikko have sent his suggestion to the
> bugtracker, or just left it to the R Core Team to figure out for
> themselves? Are we not grateful for valid suggestions? What's the
> lesson here? Maybe I'm the only slow one on the list, but to me your
> reply would have been a bit more helpful if it told us what to do, not
> just what not to do...

Well, I really basically meant to do "nothing".

Mikko and I had continued the conversation in private, but here
is an excerpt of what I wrote to him:

 I think this is a case you should not even have reported at all,
 because
 
 - it is really not important: AFAIK, if you have
   copyright, the updating to new years is not important for legal
   reasons, but only for "propaganda".
 
 - (==> ) We don't ever update copyrights if we don't change the document,
   and even then do it often but not always.
 
 - more importantly: We don't clutter the SCM log files by *only*
   just changing such dates.  Some (even most?) of us, do update
   the copyright, if we do some real (non-trivial) change to the document,
   *and* notice that the last copyright is smaller than the
   current year.

I also told him that yes indeed we are grateful to learn about
errors including typos in manuals.... ambigous statements there, etc.

Note that sometimes even these may not need to go to R-devel
(with its 1000's of  subscribers rather interested into the
development of R, future features, bug fixes or changes of R..)
and rather be reported to R core or individuals whom you may have
identified (via svn logs) as working with these documents recently.

Martin



[Rd] Update copyright year in manuals
Martin Maechler