-write @samp{1996--1998}; instead, write @samp{1996, 1997, 1998}. Do
-write each relevant year as a four-digit number. In the normal course
-of maintenance, you may come across copyright notices which omit the
-century, as in @samp{1996, 97, 98}---change these to include the
-century. However, there is no need to systematically change the
-notice in every old file.
-
-The versions that matter, for purposes of this list, are versions that
-were ancestors of the current version. So if you made a temporary
-branch in maintenance, and worked on branches A and B in parallel, then
-each branch would have its own list of years, which is based on the
-versions released in that branch. A version in branch A need not be
-reflected in the list of years for branch B, and vice versa.
-
-However, if you copy code from branch A into branch B, the years for
-branch A (or at least, for the parts that you copied into branch B) do
-need to appear in the list in branch B, because now they are ancestors
-of branch B.
-
-This rule is complicated. If we were in charge of copyright law, we
-would probably change this (as well as many other aspects).
+write @samp{1996--1998}; instead, write @samp{1996, 1997, 1998}.
+
+The copyright statement may be split across multiple lines, both in
+source files and in any generated output. This often happens for
+files with a long history, having many different years of
+publication.