Re: check-news target fails if NEWS file starts with a copyright header

[Jim Meyering]

Karl Berry wrote:

>     A while ago, Karl encouraged GNU maintainers to just license files like
>
> Well, more precisely, I attempted to clarify rms' recommendation which
> has been the intention since the early days of GNU.  I don't make policy
> decisions like this myself :).
>
> However, I don't see any particular problem with using the
> no-invariant-GFDL, or with putting the copyright at the end of NEWS, if
> that's a maintainer's preference.
>
> However however, I also see no harm in looking at the first 20 lines
> instead of the first 10 lines to match the version.

Looking at the first 20 lines was not an option for me when I wrote that,
because it would be more likely to hit a false-positive match.
These days it's less of a problem -- assuming you use the default regexp,
since it is so tight -- but early regexps matched only the version string,
with no anchor or date.

Since the regexp is customizable via cfg.mk, extending the range
would carry a small risk for those who customize it with a weaker regexp.