ess/debian/copyright

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "DE" == Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>
>>>>>     on Sat, 24 May 2008 07:57:36 -0500 writes:

    DE> Hi Martin,

    DE> On 24 May 2008 at 09:48, Martin Maechler wrote:
    DE> | (To both ess-debian and ess-core)
    DE> | 
    DE> | Nothing urgent, but since debian-maintenance of ESS has now
    DE> | caught up so nicely ..
    DE> | 
    DE> | I haven't checked who is responsible for which part of the
    DE> | copyright file, 

    DE> I would say everybody in ess-debian is. Our svn, our file. That shared
    DE> responsibility is what shared maintainership is about.  So let me thank you
    DE> for going there and trying to make it better!

I now did.

    DE> | and I must admit that I am usually not much interested in these things, but

    DE> While I acknowledge that we have to deal with them, I will readily state that
    DE> I have no great interest in it either. Legal stuff is dull and boring but
    DE> unfortunately, it really matters.

    DE> | when I've browsed the ess/debian/ files this morning,
    DE> | I have been slightly irritated by seeing the years in this part
    DE> | 
    DE> | Copyright (C) 2004 - 2008 Martin Maechler 
    DE> | Copyright (C) 1994 - 2004 A.J. Rossini
    DE> | Copyright (C) 1994 - 2008 Richard M. Heiberger <rmh at temple.edu>,
    DE> | Copyright (C) 1994 - 2008 Kurt Hornik <kurt.hornik at R-project.org>,
    DE> | Copyright (C) 1994 - 2008 Rodney A. Sparapani <rsparapa at mcw.edu>,
    DE> | Copyright (C) 1994 - 2008 Stephen Eglen <stephen at gnu.org>
    DE> | 
    DE> | How where these year ranges determined ?

    DE> Look at 'svn log' for the edit history.  

(That's what I had not done in detail when I posted, and what I
 really meant when I said 
  "I haven't checked who is responsible for which part of the
  copyright file")

    DE> I did the most recent part based on whatever information I could muster in
    DE> the sources. I also added a note for an explicit 'call for help':

    DE> edd at ron:~/svn/ess> svn log debian/copyright
    DE> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    DE> r3890 | edd | 2008-05-16 12:53:58 -0500 (Fri, 16 May 2008) | 12 lines
   
    DE> - debian/copyright partially rewrittem to fit the now-current and mandated
    DE> style of lines starting with Copyright (C) ... and License:
    DE> ESS Core: Please correct the years if need, and add missing authors, if any
    DE> [...]

    DE> s/need/needed/, I suppose.

    DE> | Tony has not stopped being an ess developer, just being the
    DE> | "project leader".
    DE> | I know that I have been hacking for "S-mode" (as it was called
    DE> | back then) already in the very early nineties, I think before Tony
    DE> | consolidated S-mode with other "stat-prog" modes into ESS around 1994.
    DE> | Also, Stephen, now being a very prominent ESS core member, has
    DE> | definitely not been in ESS core in the 90s.
    DE> | 
    DE> | Further, a quick 'grep Bates *.el' in the lisp/ subdirectory
    DE> | yielded
    DE> | 
    DE> | ess-help.el:;; Copyright (C) 1989-1994 Bates, Kademan, Ritter and Smith
    DE> | ess-inf.el:;; Copyright (C) 1989-1994 Bates, Kademan, Ritter and Smith
    DE> | ess-mode.el:;; Copyright (C) 1989-1994 Doug Bates, Ed Kademan, Frank Ritter, David Smith.
    DE> | ess-trns.el:;; Copyright (C) 1989--1994 Bates, Kademan, Ritter and Smith
    DE> | ess.el:;; Copyright (C) 1989--1996 Bates, Kademan, Ritter and Smith
    DE> | ess.el:;; Original Authors: Doug Bates, Ed Kademan, Frank Ritter, David Smith
    DE> | essl-s.el:;; Copyright (C) 1989-1997 D. Bates, Kademan, Ritter, D.M. Smith, K. Hornik,
    DE> | 
    DE> | where the context of the last one is
    DE> | 
    DE> | ;; Copyright (C) 1989-1997 D. Bates, Kademan, Ritter, D.M. Smith, K. Hornik,
    DE> | ;;	R.M. Heiberger, M. Maechler, and A.J. Rossini.
    DE> | 
    DE> | and there are more copyrights of earlier authors in SAS mode
    DE> | etc. All of these had agreed in the past to donate their lisp
    DE> | code to ESS.

    DE> All good points. Given that you *do* have svn write
    DE> access to the file, could you please make the necessary
    DE> corrections?  Also editing debian/changelog is optional;
    DE> if you have the Debian/Ubunt package dpkg-dev-el
    DE> installed you get Emacs functionality for it and C-c C-v
    DE> will start a new entry.
 
Thank you, Dirk, for the pointer to the emacs-interface package.
I have installed it on our ubuntu machines.

Stephen has and I have modified the date ranges now,
and I have only added a simple paragraph about all the older (C)
statements in the diverse  lisp/*.el files,
saying that they all have been transferred to the ESS core team.

I hope we can leave it at this pragmatic approach
unless Stephen is going the "integrate into Emacs" route.

Martin

    DE> | ----------------------------
    DE> | 
    DE> | And yes, ESS-core has not been extremely diligent in keeping the
    DE> | copyright year ranges uptodate in the many *.el files,
    DE> | but we have typically had all ESS-core members 
    DE> | share the same year-range for the main (latest) (C) statement,
    DE> | and we typically *have* added the current years to files when changed.
    DE> | 
    DE> | Maybe a pragmatic approach would be to do the same thing
    DE> | in the debian/copyright file, i.e. just change Tony's and my
    DE> | entry to match the others  ?

    DE> Sure. Please do. Feel free to add all authors of S-mode too -- it is your
    DE> call as to whether that is 'right' or not.


    DE> I also had to (re-)write debian/copyright for R for the newly added 'Ra'
    DE> package r-base-core-ra that finally entered Debian unstable as of
    DE> yesterday. The package is based on Stephen Milborrow's patch -- as a new
    DE> package this gets extra scrutiny and I had one upload rejected because of an
    DE> insufficient debian/copyright. It is shipped as a patch to R, so
    DE> debian/copyright mostly deals with R.  Luckily I found doc/COPYRIGHTS and
    DE> src/gnuwin32/COPYRIGHTS.win which I as Debian R maintainer had been unaware
    DE> of (!!)  I will carry the changes over to Debian's R package for its
    DE> copyright and mail you a copy for inspection.  Changes and corrections most
    DE> welcome.

    DE> Thanks for looking into this.  Feel free to do it for any of the other source
    DE> packages in Debian/Ubuntu.  I am sure most if not all maintainers will
    DE> appreciate a helping hand. 

    DE> Dirk

    DE> -- 
    DE> Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.