Re: ‘version-etc’ licensing and API

[Jim Meyering]

Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
> that has been posted to gmane.comp.lib.gnulib.bugs as well.
>
> Hello,

Hi Ludo,

> I’d like to use ‘version-etc-fsf’ in Guile 1.9+ (for the main
> executable), but Guile is LGPLv3+.  Would it be possible to change the
> license accordingly?

Sure.  Done.

> Besides, ‘version_etc_arn ()’ currently reads this:
>
>   switch (n_authors)
>     {
>     case 0:
>       /* The caller must provide at least one author name.  */
>       abort ();
>
> Since I don’t want to be the one who will designate a few developers as
> “authors” of this 16-year old piece of software, I’d prefer to use a
> phrase such as “the Guile development team” instead of actual author
> names.
>
> One way to do it is to provide this string as the AUTHOR argument to the
> function.  Alternatively, if it’s deemed generally useful, the above
> snippet could be rewritten along the lines of:
>
>     case 0:
>       fprintf (stream, _("Written by the %s development team.\n"),
>                package);
>       break;
>
> What do you think?

It doesn't seem worthwhile to me, but if someone loves the idea
I won't object.  I'm leaning against it, mainly so we don't have to
document that special case.