Re: Allow use of ranges in copyright notices

[David Edelsohn <dje dot gcc at gmail dot com>]

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Joseph S. Myers
<joseph@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2012, Robert Dewar wrote:
>
>> On 7/2/2012 8:35 AM, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> > On Jun 30, 2012, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > IBM's policy specifies a comma:
>> >
>> > > <first year>, <last year>
>> >
>> > > and not a dash range.
>> >
>> > But this notation already means something else in our source tree.
>>
>> I think using the dash is preferable, and is a VERY widely used
>> notation, used by all major software companies I deal with!
>
> And as a GNU project there isn't a choice between using IBM convention and
> GNU convention - only about which of the GNU options we use.  The simplest
> is <first-year>-2012 (for any value of <first-year> 1987 or later) and so
> I am proposing we move to that (make this change to README to allow it,
> allow converting files when 2012 is added to the copyright years, as is
> now done in glibc, allow a bulk conversion if anyone wishes to do one).

Joseph,

You are misunderstanding the point of my message.  I mentioned the
comma convention for worldwide legal precedence and acceptance, not
because it is an IBM convention.

There was a similar discussion many years ago. The dash format is
widely used, but the comma format has better legal clarity and
definition in worldwide copyright litigation, at least many years ago.

- David