Bug#883950: Next steps on "[GPL-3+]" proposal

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Ian Jackson wrote:
> Russ Allbery writes ("Bug#883950: Next steps on "[GPL-3+]" proposal"):

>>                                              Currently, copyright-format
>> 1.0 requires either that every License stanza in a Files paragraph contain
>> some "license text" in the copyright-format text (which may just be the
>> common-licenses pointer) or that there be a later stand-alone License
>> paragraph with the same short license identifier that has that text.  This
>> proposal breaks that property by introducing the possibility of a short
>> license identifier with no accompanying text.  This will require parser
>> changes.
>
> It will require parser changes in some, but not all, parsers.
>
> Changing the version would involve parser changes in all parsers.

I don't follow.  Why wouldn't a non-validating parser be able to simply
ignore the Format field?

Thanks,
Jonathan