Re: AUTHORS and THANKS

[Karl Berry]

The THANKS file is not a GNU standard and never has been.
Automake does not require it (except in --gnits mode, which is not GNU).

As for maintain vs. standards in general, true, there is no hard and
fast dividing line.  I seem to recall rms explaining it once (on g-p-d)
as standards being what should be done and maintain as how to do it,
FWIW.  I couldn't exactly grasp that :).  Myself, I've always thought of
it more or less as maintain being about administrative, legal, and other
non-code matters, while standards is about technical issues.

Anyway, it's certainly not a matter of what is a [GNU] "standard" or
not.  Some of the stuff in maintain is more important for GNU
maintainers to follow (I'm thinking of the legal junk) than some of the
stuff in standards (e.g., spaces before function calls).

k