I found that the old rule in automake 1.4 that COPYING.LIB is prohibited in GNITS mode is not enforced anymore. The explanation in the manual was wrong: the LGPL is not considered a failed experiment tout court, but the newer denomination Lesser GPL and the newer file name COPYING.LESSER should be adopted.
Were the GNITS standards changed to remove the prescription, or was it removed because it was considered too harsh? In my opinion, first of all the COPYING.LESSER file should be included in common_files, and given this, the enforcement on COPYING.LIB could be reintroduced and better explained in the manual. Paolo Bonzini
