Re: announce-gen: Fix copyright year in --version output.

[Bruno Haible]

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> > Maybe, I am misreading but I think using $VERSION makes more sense
> > according to the GNU Coding Standards [1]:
> >
> >     This copyright notice only needs to mention the most recent year in
> >     which changes were made—there’s no need to list the years for previous
> >     versions’ changes.
> 
> Thanks for digging up the reference.  I wonder if something changed
> here.  Can someone remind me why we do the 'make update-copyright'
> dance?

The GNU Maintainers Guide and the GNU Coding Standards have different sections
  - about the copyright notice in source files
    https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html
  - about the --version output of programs
    https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/_002d_002dversion.html

Neither is a superset of the other one.

update-copyright deals with the *copyright notices* only, not with the
--version output.

We run 'make update-copyright' every year, because updating the copyright
notices lazily is
  - more tedious,
  - more error-prone
than doing it at once.

Bruno