gnulib tries to support the typical case better
As I said: my recollection is that the original reason to have GPL in
the gnulib repo was because coreutils copied files directly instead of
using gnulib-tool. But nowadays my understanding is that coreutils, and
every other project, uses gnulib-tool.
Let's keep just 1 version in the repo.
Well, I certainly agree that would be best.
So if gnulib-tool being universal is the case now, what is the harm in
having LGPL 2.1-or-later in the repo, which is specifically allowed to
be upgraded to anything else we're concerned with here? Doesn't that
more or less solve both the technical and legal aspects?
In both cases some external information is involved
I have to say it seems rather disingenous to me to compare the license
text itself with data files maintained separately and changeable at will
as being equal examples of "external information".
I know of no other extant example of licenses being manifestly converted
from GPL to LGPL (or GPLv3 to GPLv2, which is the road we are on).
Aside from any legal questions, for that reason alone no one expects
such conversions. The expectation is that the license in the file *is*
the license. What a concept :).
I know I'm being a pain about something is apparently a totally minor
matter to everyone else. I'm sorry about that, but "downgrading" the
license on the fly just seems completely unjustifiable to me, something
that is against all the careful licensing work that we all do ...
karl
