[7.4/commit 4/5] [README] Add note about copyright and license notices

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker at adacore dot com>]

From: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@gnat.com>

Also explain the use of year ranges in copyright notices.

gdb/ChangeLog:

        * README (Copyright and License Notices): New section.
---
 gdb/ChangeLog |    4 ++++
 gdb/README    |   20 ++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/gdb/ChangeLog b/gdb/ChangeLog
index dfa36fc..11fbfff 100644
--- a/gdb/ChangeLog
+++ b/gdb/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 2012-01-06  Joel Brobecker  <brobecker@adacore.com>
 
+	* README (Copyright and License Notices): New section.
+
+2012-01-06  Joel Brobecker  <brobecker@adacore.com>
+
 	* ada-lang.c: Reformat the copyright notice.
 
 2012-01-06  Joel Brobecker  <brobecker@adacore.com>
diff --git a/gdb/README b/gdb/README
index d79fecc..999f992 100644
--- a/gdb/README
+++ b/gdb/README
@@ -638,6 +638,26 @@ 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.
+
+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, 2007-2011
+
+Every year of each range, inclusive, is a copyrightable year that
+could be listed individually.
+
 
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