Autotools and GPL3

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Brett,

Are there news on the license exception rewording for Autoconf,
Automake, and Libtool?  

There were previous discussions of this topic here:
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.autoconf.patches/4658/focus=2854>
and you sent an update to gnu-prog on Aug 27, stating that it took
longer than expected.  Has anything happened since?

This issue has been taking several months now.  Each of these packages
would like to do at least a minor release.  These releases are
important: Automake helps install the COPYING file into new packages, so
it helps distribute the GPLv3 text.  Also, its users badly need updated
versions of other helper files.  We should not have to delay shipping
them out to users for half a year because of this.

At this point, if the current state of things (license exceptions
without proper rewording for GPLv3) is legally problematic (is it
even?), I'm wondering whether it's not better if the FSF allowed to do
releases using the GPLv2 (assuming the major contributors since don't
object) until the point when the rewording is ready.

Thank you for any information.

Cheers,
Ralf