copyright year ranges and README.gnulib

[John W. Eaton]

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.

Thanks,

jwe