[ee4j-pmc] Copyright headers

[Mark Thomas <markt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I'm guessing the PMC list is the right venue for this discussion. Feel 
free to point me elsewhere if not.

The imported files from Oracle contain copyright headers along these lines:

Copyright (c) 2012, 2017 Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.


The question has arisen "How should the copyright header be updated when 
we start making changes to these files?"

There are a number of factors:

- Eclipse committers retain copyright in their own contributions.
- Eclipse (probably) has copyright in the collective work that results
  from the combination of the original contribution and the changes from
  the Eclipse committers.
- There may have been (I have no visibility) a copyright assignment when
  the Oracle donated the code to Eclipse.
- Other factors of which I am not aware.


Looking at some other Eclipse projects it seems like updating the header 
as follows might be the way to go:

Copyright (c) 2012, 2018 Oracle and/or its affiliates and others. All 
rights reserved.

where the second copyright year is updated to the current year when the 
first modification is made in that year.

Is the proposed approach above correct? If not, what is the correct 
approach and can the various projects be informed of the correct 
approach because, at the moment, individual projects are not approaching 
this in a consistent manner.

Thanks,

Mark