Re: --version output and license specifications

[Paul Eggert]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) writes:

> I very much doubt we can reliably maintain a url for each version of
> each license.

For GNU licenses, it might be simpler if the --version output merely
referred to <http://gnu.org/licenses>, as that will make the output
shorter and the instructions for maintainers simpler.  I suspect that
this URL won't change more often than the FSF changes physical mail
addresses, so it'll be good enough in practice.  (In this URL I
dropped the "www."  and the trailing "/" in the interest of brevity.)

Using a generic URL like <http://gnu.org/licenses> also would help
educate users about the variety of GNU licenses, e.g., the
documentation is typically under a different license from the source.

However, if we can't use a generic URL for legal reasons, then surely
the GNU project should be able to maintain reliable URLs for each
major version of its own licenses.  Non-GNU projects will have to be
responsible for their own license URLs, but that's their problem.