Re: RFA: Using year ranges in copyright notices...

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>]

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> > A bit of a trivial question, but I wanted to be sure it's OK to do so.
> > I would like us to use address ranges in our copyright headers, instead
> > of explicitly listing each and every year.

Here is a patch for updating README to satisfy the requirements
in the GNU maintainers guide ("Information for Maintainers of GNU
Software").

I am assuming that it's trivial enough that no one will really object.
But if you do, please let me know! I do think it's for the better,
because some of these files are starting to have an awfully long list
of years...

I didn't make the same update in the gdbserver/README file, for two
reasons:
  - gdbserver/ is part of the GDB project;
  - The contents of gdbserver/README should be mostly inside
    either of the GDB manuals (Wiki entry in the "Project Ideas"
    added for that).

I put it at the end of the README because people wanting that
information will spend the effort of locating it. Most people,
I assume, are more interested in how to build GDB than what
a range of years in the copyright notice means precisely...

gdb/ChangeLog:

        * README (Copyright and License Notices): New section.

OK to commit?

Thanks,
-- 
Joel

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commit 089b330595e021c7aad754210ac0f508d04d6f0a
Author: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>
Date:   Tue Jan 3 12:41:50 2012 +0400

    [README] Add not about copyright and license notices
    
    Also explain the use of year ranges in copyright notices.
    
    gdb/ChangeLog:
    
            * README (Copyright and License Notices): New section.

diff --git a/gdb/README b/gdb/README
index d79fecc..422551a 100644
--- a/gdb/README
+++ b/gdb/README
@@ -638,6 +638,28 @@ testsuite `standalone', without it being part of the GDB source tree.
 
 See the DejaGNU documentation for further details.
 
+
+Copyright and License Notices
+=============================
+
+Most files maintained by the GDB Project contain a copyright notice
+as well as a license notice, usually at the start of the file.  The
+copyright notice should list all the years during which nontrivial
+changes have been made to that file.
+
+To reduce the length of copyright notices, consecutive years in the
+copyright notice can be combined into a single range.  For instance,
+the following list of copyright years...
+
+    1986, 1988, 1989, 1991-1993, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
+
+... is abbreviated into:
+
+    1986, 1988-1989, 1991-1993, 1999-2000, 2007-2012
+
+Such ranges are used when nontrivial changes were made to that file
+each and every year in the range (inclusive).
+
 \f
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