Some files in Guix lack in-file license notice, does that make them GPL-3.0-only?

[Wojtek Kosior]

Hi

at least the following files from Guix source tree

    dir-locals.el
    configure.ac
    config-daemon.ac
    bootstrap
    README

have neither copyright nor license information in them.  I believe it
prevents people from assuming that GPL v3 **or later** applies to those
files.

You know, the COPYING file in the source tree has just the text of
GPLv3.  The permission to use a later GPL version only ever appears in
the source files themselves.  But in case of the files listed above,
such extra permission is absent.  As a result, all a receiver of the
source code can assume is that the terms from the COPYING file apply
here.

What should be done to fix this?  Would it be welcome if I or someone
else reached out to the authors of those files to get a permission to
also use them under hypothetical later GPL versions?

Libre software projects are in general prone to this kind of licensing
ambiguities and FSFE's REUSE[1] specification seems like a good fix for
that.  Would a patch that makes Guix repo REUSE-compliant be welcome?

Wojtek

[1] https://reuse.software/

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