Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> But is there a good reason why we use HELLO for that?  Why not README,
> say, whose first line will always start with "Copyright"?

I don't think there's a reason to use HELLO in particular.  etc/README
doesn't have Copyright on the first line, but it does have COPYRIGHT at
the beginning of a line (I think we do want something specifically in
etc/, because we know `data-directory' tells us where to find it).