diff --git a/hack/.golint_failures b/hack/.golint_failures
index a803ec0fb5..1bfb5d1b63 100644
--- a/hack/.golint_failures
+++ b/hack/.golint_failures
@@ -436,7 +436,6 @@ pkg/util/term
 pkg/util/threading
 pkg/util/tolerations
 pkg/util/workqueue/prometheus
-pkg/version
 pkg/version/verflag
 pkg/volume/aws_ebs
 pkg/volume/azure_dd
diff --git a/pkg/version/base.go b/pkg/version/base.go
index c377705fe8..6239d53ff8 100644
--- a/pkg/version/base.go
+++ b/pkg/version/base.go
@@ -39,11 +39,11 @@ var (
 	// them irrelevant. (Next we'll take it out, which may muck with
 	// scripts consuming the kubectl version output - but most of
 	// these should be looking at gitVersion already anyways.)
-	gitMajor string = "" // major version, always numeric
-	gitMinor string = "" // minor version, numeric possibly followed by "+"
+	gitMajor string // major version, always numeric
+	gitMinor string // minor version, numeric possibly followed by "+"
 
 	// semantic version, derived by build scripts (see
-	// https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/design/versioning.md
+	// https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/contributors/design-proposals/release/versioning.md
 	// for a detailed discussion of this field)
 	//
 	// TODO: This field is still called "gitVersion" for legacy
@@ -51,9 +51,9 @@ var (
 	// semantic version is a git hash, but the version itself is no
 	// longer the direct output of "git describe", but a slight
 	// translation to be semver compliant.
-	gitVersion   string = "v0.0.0-master+$Format:%h$"
-	gitCommit    string = "$Format:%H$"    // sha1 from git, output of $(git rev-parse HEAD)
-	gitTreeState string = "not a git tree" // state of git tree, either "clean" or "dirty"
+	gitVersion   = "v0.0.0-master+$Format:%h$"
+	gitCommit    = "$Format:%H$"    // sha1 from git, output of $(git rev-parse HEAD)
+	gitTreeState = "not a git tree" // state of git tree, either "clean" or "dirty"
 
-	buildDate string = "1970-01-01T00:00:00Z" // build date in ISO8601 format, output of $(date -u +'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')
+	buildDate = "1970-01-01T00:00:00Z" // build date in ISO8601 format, output of $(date -u +'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')
 )