>> I notice that grep.texi now uses year ranges in its copyright notice.
>> I am confused, because I thought this was discouraged. Has thinking
>> changed on this?
No, thinking on this has not changed (ever).
> I've always seen obvious value in using ranges, and decreased value
> in writing them out. Arguments to the contrary?
There are no "arguments", it's just a suboptimality in the legal system.
At least (as I've said before), when I read the Library of Congress
documents, I saw nothing saying that ranges were permitted. I've also
never seen ranges in printed books. Finally, it was the FSF's lawyers
who originally determined it (long ago) as the best/safest practice. FWIW.
Does that mean a copyright statement using ranges suddenly becomes
completely meaningless and legally invalid, like a compiler saying
"syntax error"? Certainly not. The law doesn't work like that. It's a
matter of what is recommended. If you choose not to follow the
recommendation, the world won't end.
For myself, I just wish we could stop redundantly having this discussion
over and over :). We've wasted much more time on emails about it than
could possibly have ever been saved by using ranges. Are we going to
talk about trailing whitespace next :)?
karl
