by verdverm:

go version devel +2bce43d48503 Mon Mar 17 12:07:30 2014 -0700 linux/amd64



What steps reproduce the problem?

try to MarshalJSON a negative date (i.e. negative year)
http://play.golang.org/p/wwfjigrteu



What happened?
Time.MarshalJSON throws an error from a check on the year range [0-9999]

It is if statement in MarshalJSON that produces the error
https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/src/pkg/time/time.go#936

This seems artificial, since I remember reading somewhere (which I can't find now...),
that Go's date can go back as far as 4000 something BC



What should have happened instead?

A negative date should be produced, in accordance with RFC-3339.
The play link shows that the RFC3339 format produces the correct output.
I think just the check needs to be modified or removed.

This is the same for MarshalText.
https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/src/pkg/time/time.go#953



Please provide any additional information below.

I figure it's about time, pardon the unintentional pun, that I give back to the Go
community. So I'd like to fix the issue as well, if that's ok with you all.