On 9/26/07, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Having a spec file be BSD so that the original author gets credit for > writing the spec file also makes sense to me. > > But really, how deeply should we care? Maybe it's best to ask Spot to > make a call. He's "the licensing guy". Let him make a sensible decision > and move on. I there are there two different issues here. The licensing and giving credit to contributors to the spec files from which our current offerings are based. How much should we care about the licensing policy? Personally I don't think the licensing of the specs matters at all. But I think from a PR and morale standpoint finding a way to give credit where credit is due matters a lot to this community centric project...even if such credit is not a mandated requirement by the governing license. The licensing issue is one of legal requirements and policy (its not even clear to me specs are copyrightable content) which is orthogonal to credit. We could just as easily pick a licensing policy that doesn't mandate credit and end up not solving the underlying problem. Here are the fundamental questions that I keep coming back to: Is it ethically wrong for me as a Fedora packager to take an existing spec file without an explicit license from another location as the base for the spec file I plan to submit for review? The pit of my stomach says no. Is it ethically wrong for me to do so without giving credit to the original spec file author? The pit of my stomach says most likely. What is the best way to give credit when re-basing the spec file for fedora submission? Well off the top of my head, I can do it in the changelog entry for the specfile or I can do it in the cvs commit entry. Is either one better than the other? And if there is a best practices method can we make it part of the new submission checklist procedures to remind new contributors that giving credit where credit is due for the spec file helps make for healthier community relations? -jef"Speaking of ethics... is it wrong to be happy that my father-in-law is in the hospital prepping for surgery because the hospital waiting area has free wifi that I can use to catch up on email?"spaleta _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
