From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 18434 invoked by alias); 4 Jan 2012 17:28:46 -0000 Received: (qmail 18426 invoked by uid 22791); 4 Jan 2012 17:28:45 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.6 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,RP_MATCHES_RCVD X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from fencepost.gnu.org (HELO fencepost.gnu.org) (140.186.70.10) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:28:32 +0000 Received: from ams by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RiUdb-0008Td-3Z; Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:28:31 -0500 Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:28:00 -0000 Message-Id: From: ams@gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) To: Stan Shebs CC: gdb-patches@sourceware.org In-reply-to: <4F047C06.8030000@earthlink.net> (message from Stan Shebs on Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:19:18 -0800) Subject: Re: RFC: one more question about year ranges in copyright notices... Reply-to: ams@gnu.org References: <20120104094649.GV2730@adacore.com> <4F047C06.8030000@earthlink.net> X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2012-01/txt/msg00158.txt.bz2 On 1/4/12 1:46 AM, Joel Brobecker wrote: > Hello, > > I thought I was giong to do my best to forget about this as soon as > the copyright notices would be updated, but what do you guys think > of Jan's remark: > >>> + 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991-1993, 1999, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 >>> + >>> +... is abbreviated into: >>> + >>> + 1986, 1988-1989, 1991-1993, 1999-2000, 2007-2011 > [...] >> IIUC this would allow us to write 1986-2011 everywhere as the GDB >> package was nontrivially modified each of these years. Just restating >> Joseph. > Not totally critical, but I am seduced. I found that the formatting > of many copyright headers look a bit ugly before the list of years > shown in the notice is long enough that "Free Software Foundation, Inc." > would not fit on the rest of the line. > I agree with making it 1986-2012 everywhere uniformly. For files with new code, it would be nice if the first year in the pair could be the year of the file's creation - it's a little jarring to see something like tic6x-tdep.c with a 1986 date at the top of it. The creation date of a file might not coresspond to the year when the content of the file was written. If tic6x-tdep.c was created based on another files content, then it would be correct to add 1986 to the list of copyright years. On the other hand, a copyright range like 2005-2012 makes it unclear if one is trying to say that that a particular file was modified each year in the range, or that it's "inheriting" the range from GDB as a whole. AFAIK: The range is means that the copyright holder has asserted his rights as a copyright holder each year during that period. It has nothing to do with if the particular file was modified during that year.