On: M4 as a templating language (2020)

[cat199]

doesn't help that gnu manual pages & documentation tend to completely ignore the origins of the tool they are emulating

(compare HISTORY sections of BSD userland vs GNU coreutils ones as one simple example)

[antientropic → cat199]

The GNU M4 manual has a sizable section acknowledging its precursors: https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/m4.html#History

[cat199 → antientropic]

perhaps the full manual, but the manual page (which is what I specifically mentioned) has quite the opposite:

    $ man gm4 |sed -ne 119,121p
    AUTHOR
           Written by Rene' Seindal.

[lmm → cat199]

Part of the point of GNU was to be a fresh implementation with no copyright dependency on Unix.

[repiret → lmm]

That doesn’t preclude acknowledging the history of the tool.

[cat199 → repiret]

... which would be essentially plagiarism in other fields.