COPYRIGHT file

[Peter Johansson]

Hi Peter,

I noted your commit to add COPYING to target maintainer-clean:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=autoconf-archive.git;a=commit;f=Makefile.am;hb=92d4b0359d6fa12a6ee41056e879dd4087cc6d8d

I don't think that is a very good idea. In fact I think COPYING should 
be committed into git in order to make it clear under which version of 
GPL the project is licensed. It's true that automake can create a 
COPYING file if it's missing, but it's dangerous because the COPYING 
file be different depending on which version of automake that is used. 
Automake prior version 1.10.2 creates a GPLv2 COPYING whereas 1.10.2 and 
newer creates a GPLv3 COPYING file.

This has been discussed quite a lot on the automake list; see, for 
example, this thread in which Karl Berry explains why it is a bad idea 
not to commit  the COPYING file to the version control repository:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-automake/2008-12/msg00021.html

The conclusion was to add a warning when automake creates the file. If 
you let automake create the COPYING file with a recent automake, you 
will notice that automake recommend you to commit the file to your VCS.

Cheers,
Peter