Re: Bison + Autoscan + Coreutils

[Akim Demaille]

| > From: Akim Demaille <address@hidden>
| > Date: 27 Sep 2002 15:03:15 +0200
| 
| > Here is the plan: introduce a macro which says `I swear I'm GPL'.
| > Then we can start shipping quotearg, argmatch etc. with Autoconf, and
| > have it be able to run the corresponding tests, ask for their shipping
| > to Automake etc.  Another Autoconf release? => autoreconf --install
| > update the files.  Maybe it even adds a new requirement for argmatch,
| > say quotearg => without noticing, quotearg.[ch] are shipped set up
| > etc.
| 
| That all sounds good, except for the "I swear I'm GPL" part.  I'm not
| sure it's Autoconf's job to enforce the GPL, and I can see any number
| of glitches will will be a pain for Autoconf users to work around.
| 
| How about if we just include a GPL'ed quotearg etc. in Autoconf, and
| then have the user worry about following the licenses appropriately?
| That's what they do now anyway.  We should mention the issue in the
| Autoconf FAQ, which talks about licensing matters, but otherwise I
| don't think we need to worry about it.

As a matter of fact, I think we should be able to support several
frameworks.  In another message, I don't remember which, I was
suggested something like

        AC_CONFIG_LICENSE([gpl | dp | ...])

and have in the autoconf package

        ~/lib/gpl/c/fnmatch.[ch]

and maybe

        ~/lib/dp/c/fnmatch.[ch]

Said another way: I think that by letting the people letting
configure.ac know what the license is, we can provide a better service
than by merely assuming GPL.