Copyrights not detected if year is missing from (c) or Copyright declaration

[william-elastisys]

Description

It looks like Scancode fails to recognize a copyright statement if the year as well as the (c), or Copyright is not included in the declaration.

Examples of declaration not found by scancode:

Copyright The OpenTelemetry Authors

(c) The OpenTelementry Authors

How To Reproduce

1. Download either:
   • https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/blob/main/version.go
   • https://github.com/containerd/errdefs/blob/main/errors.go
2. Then run to scan:

   ./scancode --json-pp - -c version.go
   

   or

   ./scancode --json-pp - -c errors.go
   

And no copyrights are detected in these files.

System configuration

• What OS are you running on? (Windows/MacOS/Linux)

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? (pip/source download/other)

source download

[arjun23009]

Hi, I’m new to the ScanCode Toolkit project and exploring it as a first contribution.
I went through the description and reproduction steps.
I wanted to check if this issue is still open and suitable for a beginner to start with.
I’m happy to begin with investigation or tests if that helps.

[arjun23009]

I was able to reproduce this in a Codespaces environment.

Steps I followed:

• Downloaded the example file:
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/main/version.go
• Ran:
  ./scancode --json-pp -- -c version.go

Result:
Scan completes successfully but no copyrights are detected for this file,
even though it contains a copyright declaration without a year.

Happy to help further with investigation or tests if needed.