Re: copyright year ranges and README.gnulib

[Jim Meyering]

John W. Eaton wrote:

> On  1-Jan-2011, Karl Berry wrote:
>
> |     Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] maint: new rule to update copyright year ranges
> |
> | This brings up a related topic that belatedly crossed my mind recently.
> | rms stated an extra requirement of making a statement in the README
> | about copyright ranges when they are used.
>
> The maintainers guide that is currently on gnu.org says
>
>   You can use a range (‘2008-2010’) instead of listing individual years
>   (‘2008, 2009, 2010’) if and only if: 1) every year in the range,
>   inclusive, really is a “copyrightable” year that would be listed
>   individually; and 2) you make an explicit statement in a ‘README’ file
>   about this usage.
>
> If there is supposed to be an "explicit statement" about using
> ranges of years in copyright statements, could you please give us a
> clue about exactly what that statement should say?  It's not
> immediately clear to me precisely what statement should appear in the
> README file.

Hi John,

I added this sentence to coreutils' README and a couple others:

    For any copyright year range specified as YYYY-ZZZZ in this package
    note that the range specifies every single year in that closed interval.