In testing out the new update-copyright script on autoconf, I noticed the following conversion:
-Copyright (C) 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008 Free Software +Copyright (C) 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. In my opinion, this looks ugly for its inconsistent style. I would rather see it as either: -Copyright (C) 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008 Free Software +Copyright (C) 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. (matching the recommendations of the GNU maintainer manual), or: -Copyright (C) 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008 Free Software +Copyright (C) 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. (matching the compressed style preferred by coreutils). I don't know if it is worth adding an option to update-copyright to choose between the two styles. Personally, now that update-copyright is able to re- wrap lines into sane lengths, it is no longer quite the hassle of using the longhand style (one of the arguments for using the compressed style was that emacs' update copyright hooks didn't rewrap lines, so things got unwieldy if you didn't touch up the results). So far, I've been trying to follow the GNU maintainer recommendations and use longhand rather than compressed years when listing autoconf copyrights. -- Eric Blake
