The spec currently links to the matching guidelines by guideline
number.  For example, [1]:

  type: indicates whether the text is replaceable or omitable as per
    Matching Guideline #2 (“Substantive Text”).

That seems brittle with the guidelines unversioned.  For example, that
reference will go stale if guideline changes move that suggestion to
be guideline 4.  There is currently a “v2.0” in the header of [2], but
the spec does not require that version, and I don't see links to
earlier versions on spdx.org.  Digging around in the Internet Archive
turns up an earlier version on 2013-04-30 [3] (where the “Substantive
Text” section was guideline 1).  Then a new “How These Guidelines Are
Applied” section came in between 2013-05-19 [4] and 2013-12-07 [5].
The v2.0 label landed between 2015-04-25 [6] and 2015-05-25 [7].  And
there don't seem to have been any changes since then.

Is there a reason why these guidelines are not part of the spec
itself?  It seems like a new appendix in [8] would avoid confusion
like “I thought I'd implemented SPDX 2.2, but now the matching
guidelines have changed on me”.

Cheers,
Trevor

[1]: https://spdx.org/spdx-specification-21-web-version#h.2mjng0vqrghe
[2]: https://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines
[3]: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20130430090750/https://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines
[4]: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20130519043548/http://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines
[5]: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20131207063710/http://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines
[6]: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20150425023643/http://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines
[7]: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20150525115354/http://spdx.org/spdx-license-list/matching-guidelines
[8]: https://github.com/spdx/spdx-spec

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