Re: auto-inserting COPYING

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Karl,

* Karl Berry wrote on Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 01:14:54AM CET:
>     according to NEWS it was actually deprecated in version 1.8.
> 
> So maybe it's time to remove it, instead of adding the warning (as Ralf
> so recently did)?

Yes, the warning was added very recently, in 1.10.2 only, as a result
of the prior discussion.

> In this case, it seems to me the resulting
> incompatibility (of not adding the file) is actually desirable because
> it will force the authors relying on it to make their licensing
> decisions explicit -- as they should have been in the first place.

Automake has forever had different strictness styles for packages:
'foreign' for packages that don't need to follow GNU standards, 'gnu'
for those that do, and 'gnits' for those that like some extra
strictness.  Default mode is 'gnu'.  In 'gnu' and 'gnits' mode, automake
has forever had the semantics that, when called with --add-missing, it
installed the files that were needed.  This included COPYING if no such
file was found.  It has never overwritten an existing COPYING file.

Now, of course, many GNU packages actually want to use the GPL for their
package.  Their authors have less work to do if the COPYING file is
copied into the tree for them.

This whole matter is a matter of defaults.  Defaults should be sane.
No one has ever complained back when COPYING was GPLv2.  Now, there
are complaints, because GPLv3 is not universally loved.  The question
is which set of Automake users should suffer because of this: those
that have their strictness set appropriately?

FWIW, I am quite tired of this matter, and I apologize for being a
bit harsh about it.  If you tell me that Automake needs to be less
convenient for its users, in order to avoid GPLv3-in-COPYING, then
I would like to have a definite FSF statement on this where I can point
bug reports to, and otherwise deny responsibility.  I think it would
make Automake less convenient, which is why I chose against it, but
that's of course only my opinion.

And yes, the only other sane semantics IMVHO would be to let automake
fail hard in 'gnu' and 'gnits' mode if COPYING is not present.
Adding a yes-please-copy-COPYING option does not seem sensible either.

>     http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-automake/2008-09/msg00035.html
>     in which rms shares his thoughts on the matter.
> 
> Thanks for the pointers.  But I don't see rms saying that adding a
> COPYING file is ok:
> 
> rms> It occurs to me that Automake could warn about the lack rather than
> rms> supply one.  Or it could ask what to do in this case.
> 
> "rather than" being the crucial phrase.  (I completely agree with Ralf
> that an interactive query is not right.)

There was a bit of off-list discussion on this.  Yes, that is quite
unfortunate.  RMS never suggested the solution I used, but if I
understood him correctly, then he did not veto it either.  Maybe I
should ask again.

Cheers,
Ralf