Why not simplify Copyright at boot/dmesg?

[Joshua Isom]

On 2/23/2013 4:23 PM, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:56:46 -0600
> "Joseph A. Nagy, Jr" <jnagyjr1978 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 02/23/13 15:33, Joshua Isom wrote:
>>> On 2/23/2013 1:10 PM, Joseph A. Nagy, Jr wrote:
>> <snip>
>>>> 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.
>
> 	It's even simpler than that 4.4 BSD Lite2 was the final release
> from Berkeley CSRG in 1994. There have been no later patches to 4.4BSD from
> Berkeley, that was the last release of any kind from CSRG. FreeBSD 2.0 was
> based on 4.4-Lite, the updates in Lite2 were merged in pretty quickly IIRC.

It would matter when it was released, not merged.  If it was merged in 
1996 but the code was released in 1994, the copyright's still 1994.

>> Not that I find it an issue, but could whatever is left over be removed?
>> Just a thought, not a concern.
>
> 	I can't think why anyone would want to, and I expect there's a *lot*
> left over, certainly their copyright notice appears in many files
> in /usr/src.
>

That also ties in with NIH syndrome.  Gnu does that a lot just to make 
sure they can change to GPLv4 without problems, while Linux is still 
GPLv2.  It's also not just Berkeley, but other people and organizations 
hold copyrights.  From a quick glance, netatalk is by the University of 
Michigan.  Mounting a cd using cd9660, which is still listed as 
Berkeley, is probably so tested and proven by now, that there would be 
no benefit to rewriting it other than to change the copyright.