Make WordPress Core

Opened 9 years ago

Closed 9 years ago

#35278 closed defect (bug) (fixed)

Copyright year should be kept as 2011

Reported by: pento's profile pento Owned by: jorbin's profile jorbin
Milestone: 4.5 Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: General Keywords: 2nd-opinion
Focuses: Cc:

Description

In [18201], the line "Copyright 2011 by the contributors" was added to license.txt.

Since then, we've been bumping the the year ([23306], [28064], [31017], [36141]), but this may be incorrect. Per this description (kindly supplied by @garyj), it should stay as the year of first publication - I think in this case, the year when we changed from GPL to GPL2+.

@nacin, @markjaquith: Given both of your involvement in these changes, could you give your thoughts?

Change History (6)

#1 @netweb
9 years ago

Via @chipbennett: https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2014/07/08/proper-copyrightlicense-attribution-for-themes/

"The copyright notice should include the year in which you finished preparing the release (so if you finished it in 1998 but didn’t post it until 1999, use 1998). You should add the proper year for each release; for example, “Copyright 1998, 1999 Terry Jones” if some versions were finished in 1998 and some were finished in 1999. If several people helped write the code, use all their names."

#2 @netweb
9 years ago

Based on the make post in my previous comment and that below would that then imply that the 1st line should be:

  • Copyright 2011-2016 by the contributors

The line Copyright 2003-2010 by the contributors further down in license.txt see last years Slack discussion here

Matt wrote:

"in license.txt: " WordPress - Web publishing software

Copyright 2003-2010 by the contributors

WordPress is released under the GPL"

Matt wrote:

should we update that to 2015?

Nacin wrote:

@matt: that line is correct. 2010 was when we clarified GPL2 ​*or later*​. A unit test helpfully enforces another number in the license to be current. It might make sense to clarify it a bit so it doesn't look like a mistake.

Matt wrote:

indeed

Nacin wrote:

@mark originally wrote that, we can see what he thinks in terms of clarifying the language

#3 @rabmalin
9 years ago

#35508 was marked as a duplicate.

#4 @jorbin
9 years ago

  • Owner set to jorbin
  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from new to closed

In 36855:

Clarify Copyright year

Based on http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#401 and being more consistent with the rest of the document.

See also https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2014/07/08/proper-copyrightlicense-attribution-for-themes/

Fixes #35278

#5 @jorbin
9 years ago

  • Resolution fixed deleted
  • Status changed from closed to reopened

#6 @jorbin
9 years ago

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from reopened to closed

In 36856:

Fix License test

Broken in r36855

Fixes #35278

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