GeoTools will now focus on filling in headers with the current year on initial file creation ... and that is it.
/* * GeoTools - The Open Source Java GIS Toolkit * http://geotools.org * * (C) 2016, Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) * * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or * modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; * version 2.1 of the License. * * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU * Lesser General Public License for more details. */Previously, we asked contributors to update the headers each time they modified a file, resulting in a date range at the top of each file. While not technically difficult, this was a constant chore for committers and caused friction and delays reviewing pull requests. We trust that the new policy will ease the pull request submission and review process.
We have approached the OSGeo Board and gotten approval to bounce this change off legal counsel. It is hoped that other OSGeo projects can benefit from being more relaxed.
Thanks to Justin for writing up the change proposal and steering this conversation on the mailing list.