licenses in generated m4 files (was: versioning macros)

[Peter Simons]

Bastiaan Veelo writes:

 > [There] is no need to discuss this, because as has been
 > pointed out before:

 > "Every nontrivial file needs a license notice as well as
 > the copyright notice. (Without a license notice giving
 > permission to copy and change the file would make the file
 > non-free.)"
 > (http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/License-Notices.html#License-Notices)

Well, my point is that the files (a) _are_ trivial because
they are just automatically derived versions of some other
file and that they (b) _do_ contain a license because there
is an URL pointing towards the page stating it.

For over 6 YEARS the Macro Archive has distributed macros
without repeating the legal disclaimers in every single
file, and not once has this bothered any of the users, but
apparently NOW it really is a major problem.

Whatever.

So if others really feel that strongly about this topic,
I'll make the necessary changes once I have a concrete
proposal that answers:

 (1) How does the author choose which license his macro is
     under? How does the markup format specify this
     information? Who takes care of editing the existing
     macros to comply with this change (in case that will be
     necessary)?

 (2) Which licenses do we accept?

 (3) What does the generated m4 source look like for each
     respective license we support?

Once I know how this is supposed to be handled, adapting the
code is gonna be no problem.

Peter