Re: auto-inserting COPYING

[Peter Johansson]

Hi Karl,

Karl Berry wrote:
> I just learned that in some circumstances automake will insert a COPYING
> file if it's missing (albeit with a warning), e.g., at make dist?  (I
> didn't look into the precise details.)
>   
This is a very old feature and according to NEWS it was actually 
deprecated in version 1.8.

> I expect there's probably been plenty of discussion about it that I'm
> unaware of, but to my naive eyes, this is simply a mistake.  It seems to
> me that the license file of whatever sort should always be included in
> the sources: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyMustIInclude.
>
>   
> Having automake insert it tempts people to treat it as an auto-generated
> file.
>   
I believe many people got aware of the problem after automake was 
upgraded to insert GPLv3 rather than GPLv2 as before, which meant that 
which file that was "auto-generated" depended on which version of 
automake that was used.

> If there are significant arguments for auto-inclusion of COPYING, we
> should probably ask rms about it explicitly.  Unless he's already given
> his blessing, in which case forget this whole thing.
>
>   
Yes this has been discussed before. See for example this thread
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-automake/2008-09/msg00035.html
in which rms shares his thoughts on the matter.

Seems like the conclusion of this discussion was to add a warning when a 
COPYING was inserted
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-automake/2008-11/msg00016.html


Cheers,
Peter