Re: COPYING tabs vs whitespaces

On 4.2.2016 20:15, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Petr Stodulka [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

I found that license file COPYING is different as compared with
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt If I pass over with
Linus's preamble, change is only about whitespaces - tabs
vs. space.  Probably it's minor non-essential change, but some
projects do this change, so rather I ask about that.

Interesting.  I cannot quite connect "some projects do this change"
and "so rather I ask".  Are you asking why this project changed it?

Nope. I apologize for my czenglish. It means: From my colleagues I hear,
that some projects had same differences (tabs vs. spaces) in their copy
of the license file and they make it later equivalent with the one in
gnu.org. So I ask rather here / point out this difference, if you know
about that or you want to have same one.

Yes, I know, it's just about whitespaces.

Petr.

After running "diff" between the two, I think the changes are only
on the indented section title lines, and "git blame" tells us that
the section title lines in the copy we have has always been that way
since Linus added to it at 075b845a (Add a COPYING notice, making it
explicit that the license is GPLv2., 2005-04-11).

So, perhaps the copy Linus got originally had leading runs of spaces
that are multiples-of-8-long unexpanded to leading tabs back then,
or perhaps he did that unexpanding himself.