Re: fdl-1.3

[Bruno Haible]

Karl Berry wrote:
> I was surprised to see the "1.2" used in so many places.  The Emacs
> manual, for example, has this in subfiles:
> 
> @c This is part of the Emacs manual.
> @c Copyright (C) 1985, 1986, 1987, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000,
> @c   2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software
> @c Foundation, Inc..
> @c See file emacs.texi for copying conditions.
> 
> Is there a reason not to adopt that convention here?

gnulib is, by design, not monolithic.
  - Modules get moved around between projects, including their .texi
    documentation.
  - At some point in time people may be interested in specific portions of
    gnulib, such as only the POSIX headers and functions replacements.
Therefore it's better to not refer to something that depends on the packaging
of gnulib.

When Paul and I implemented the move from GPLv2+ to GPLv3+ for gnulib a year
ago, the painful circumstance was not the number of files to be modified and
committed. It was the number of variants of the GPL header that was in use.
Therefore, as long as the header being used is consistently the same, I don't
mind whether 1, 5, or 1000 files carry the FDL version number.

Bruno