From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8962 invoked by alias); 3 Jan 2012 08:53:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 8941 invoked by uid 22791); 3 Jan 2012 08:52:59 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from rock.gnat.com (HELO rock.gnat.com) (205.232.38.15) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:52:44 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by filtered-rock.gnat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BDB42BAFD5; Tue, 3 Jan 2012 03:52:44 -0500 (EST) Received: from rock.gnat.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (rock.gnat.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id E+V5tvyrtOf7; Tue, 3 Jan 2012 03:52:44 -0500 (EST) Received: from joel.gnat.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by rock.gnat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9402F2BAFAF; Tue, 3 Jan 2012 03:52:43 -0500 (EST) Received: by joel.gnat.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id DD564145615; Tue, 3 Jan 2012 12:52:34 +0400 (RET) Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:53:00 -0000 From: Joel Brobecker To: Eli Zaretskii Cc: gdb-patches@sourceware.org Subject: Re: RFA: Using year ranges in copyright notices... Message-ID: <20120103085234.GK2730@adacore.com> References: <20120103042431.GI2730@adacore.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="neYutvxvOLaeuPCA" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) 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/msg00085.txt.bz2 --neYutvxvOLaeuPCA Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-length: 1189 > > 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 --neYutvxvOLaeuPCA Content-Type: text/x-diff; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="readme.diff" Content-length: 1446 commit 089b330595e021c7aad754210ac0f508d04d6f0a Author: Joel Brobecker 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). + (this is for editing this file with GNU emacs) Local Variables: --neYutvxvOLaeuPCA--