Re: Licence for gnulib.mk slightly vague

[Bruno Haible]

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> > The copy of gnulib.mk in Emacs says:
> >
> >     # This file is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU
> >     # General Public License.  As a special exception to the GNU General
> >     # Public License, this file may be distributed as part of a program
> >     # that contains a configuration script generated by Autoconf, under
> >     # the same distribution terms as the rest of that program.
> >
> > There's no information about which version of the GPL.
> > m4/gl-comp.m4 seems to have the same issue.
> ...
> I don't recall why we used this particular license here though, anyone?

This wording dates back to this patch:
  <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2004-08/msg00046.html>,
committed by Paul on 2004-08-12.

Probably this was the common wording found in many other files.

IMO the vagueness about the GPL version does not really matter, because
hardly anyone distributes such a generated Makefile.am separately from a
package with a configure script.

Bruno
-- 
In memoriam Pavlos Bakoyannis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlos_Bakoyannis>