4 ms·
This is really silly. Not fun or interesting at all. Gnu coreutils wants all the command line utilities to respond to --help and --version. The version numbe
by gkya 9y ago
This is really silly. Not fun or interesting at all. Gnu coreutils wants all the command line utilities to respond to --help and --version. The version number is that of the coreutils package, if your ls is Gnu ls, it'll say the same number too:
[2] g@alpha (0)$ /bin/true --version
true (GNU coreutils) 8.26
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Written by Jim Meyering.
[3] g@alpha (0)$ ls --version
ls (GNU coreutils) 8.26
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.
[4] g@alpha (0)$
WRT AT&T true(1), well they probably were required to put a header in a certain format in every source file, and they put that in this one to. Probably the implementor just copied from a template and left it like that. Also I don't beleive they manually edit the years in copyright notices, one usually has a script to do that.
- unkown-unknowns 9y ago> Gnu coreutils wants all the command line utilities to respond to --true and --version. The version number is that of the coreutils package, You meant to say --help and --version.
- gkya 9y agoYes, thanks.
- racer-v 9y ago> Also I don't beleive they manually edit the years in copyright notices, one usually has a script to do that. It's not clear if you're referring to the copyright notices displayed to the user, or the copyright notices embedded in the source code. In the former case: I have been told to programmatically print $CURRENT_YEAR in a program's displayed copyright notice, which I refused to comply with. After all, someone running the program 200 years in the future should be able to determine that the copyright has long since expired.
- michaelhoffman 9y agoAt the rate things are going, nothing since Mickey Mouse will ever again have expired copyright, as lawmakers will keep extending the copyright term.
- Iv 9y agoWell, think about us in Europe who have a chance to have a sane copyright reform one day.