On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Joseph S. Myers <jos...@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....@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