Why not simplify Copyright at boot/dmesg?

[Joshua Isom]

On 2/23/2013 1:10 PM, Joseph A. Nagy, Jr wrote:
> On 02/23/13 12:32, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>> On Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:11:50 +0100
>> Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 23 Feb 2013 16:47:10 +0100, vermaden wrote:
>>>> Why not simplify that:
>>>>
>>>> | Copyright (c) 1992-2013 The FreeBSD Project.
>>>> | Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993,
>>>> | 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights
>>>> reserved.
>>>> | FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
>>>> | (...)
>>>>
>>>> ... into that:
>>>>
>>>> | Copyright (c) 1992-2013 The FreeBSD Project.
>>>> | Copyright (c) 1979-1994 The Regents of the University of California.
>>>> | FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
>>>> | (...)
>>>
>>> Because you need to exclude 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1990
>>> which are missing in list of years. :-)

Copyright counts for published years.  Look at the copyright on a book 
that's not a first edition, try classic children's books.  They'll list 
several years decades apart.  If nothing was published in 1983, there's 
no new copyright for that year.  In 2077, what was released in 1982 will 
be public domain, and nothing more until 2079.

>>     There's that, also that copyright message belongs to the Regents of
>> the University of California and unless I misremember one of the license
>> conditions is retaining their copyright notice - altering it would
>> probably
>> be a license violation.
>>
>
> It seems the regents copyright claims end in 1994. Perhaps some
> underlying piece of code is still in FreeBSD requiring this notice?
>

Perhaps the creation of FreeBSD and the release of 4.4BSD?  Nothing from 
Berkley's been added, so no new copyright.  There's little need to 
incorporate later patches to 4.4BSD because divergences between the 
4.4BSD and FreeBSD.