Copyright statement with a year range ending in the word "NOW" not detected at all

[sschuberth]

Description

A copyright statement like

Copyright (c) 2013-NOW Jinzhu <wosmvp@gmail.com>

is not detected at all. If the "-NOW" part is removed from the year range, the copyright is detected.

How To Reproduce

Run

LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 scancode --copyright --json-pp - LICENSE

on https://github.com/jinzhu/configor/blob/f7a0fc7c9fc697269b1749c1cc472d49baa8d33c/LICENSE#L3.

System configuration

• What OS are you running on? Fedora Linux
• What version of scancode-toolkit was used to generate the scan file? 32.5.0
• What installation method was used to install/run scancode? RPM

[hesa]

@silverhook , any thoughts on a copyright range ending with ǸOW`?

IANAL
.. a pragmatic take, since year - NOW does not make sense because you get (c) when you create your work and not when (NOW) someone looks at your (c) statement, so

• perhaps allow sth like [0-9]* - [a-zA-Z0-9]* (or even wider) when identifying (c) statements - even though the last part of it (IMO) does not make sense

@sschuberth , have you seen anything similar somewhere else?
/IANAL

[sschuberth]

@sschuberth , have you seen anything similar somewhere else?

Well, what I sometimes see is "unfilled templates" where people literally use e.g. "2013 - <end_year>" as they forgot to replace "<end_year>".

[silverhook]

Hi, @hesa, I definitely have thoughts on “now” and year ranges in general:

Why not use a year range?¶

Similar to the previous question, the year span (e.g. 1990-2013) is basically just a lazy version of bumping the year. So all of the above-mentioned applies.

A special case is when people use a range like {$year}-present. This has almost all of the above-mentioned issues7, plus it adds another dimension of confusion, because what constitutes the “present” is an open – and potentially philosophical – question. Does it mean:

• the time when the file was last modified?
• the time it was released as a package?
• the time you downloaded it (maybe for the first time)?
• the time you ran it the last time?
• or perhaps even the ever eluding “right now”?

As you can see, this does not help much at all. Quite the opposite!

Feel free to check out the whole blog post (and attached FAQ):

https://matija.suklje.name/how-and-why-to-properly-write-copyright-statements-in-your-code

[hesa]

Well, what I sometimes see is "unfilled templates" where people literally use e.g. "2013 - <end_year>" as they forgot to replace "<end_year>".

:(

@silverhook , I think that it is unfortunately needed to add checks like what @sschuberth describes.

[silverhook]

Well, what I sometimes see is "unfilled templates" where people literally use e.g. "2013 - <end_year>" as they forgot to replace "<end_year>".

:(

@silverhook , I think that it is unfortunately needed to add checks like what @sschuberth describes.

Depends on what you want to detect.

[hesa]

When using Scancode to identify copyright statements in order to comply with the license(s).

[silverhook]

If that’s a pre-existing statement that’s recorded, we should record it that way.

If the statement is useful or correct, is a separate question.