Hello, Some upstreams don't make source code releases. Instead they just provide access to source code repositories from where package maintainers can make their own tarball and use them to build SRPMs. Often these repositories don't contain anything except the minimal set of source files and build scripts, without any license files or documentation of any kind. This is especially true in Java world, where users are expected to use binaries built by upstream developers and not rebuild the software on their own. The problem arises when the license under which the software is redistributed requires a copy of the license to be shipped with any copies or derivative works of the software. Upstream doesn't have to do that because they are the copyright holders, but still the requirement for Fedora maintainers remains. A copy of the license must be included in RPMs in order for the package to be redistributable without violating the license terms (sometimes only binary in RPM, in some cases both SRPM and binary RPMs). Licenses that require including their texts with all derivative works include some widely used licenses like ASL 2.0, EPL, BSD and MIT. Some package maintainers don't include separate copies of license files because they believe this would be against the Licensing Guidelines. I would ask you to clarify the Guidelines to explicitly allow including separate license copies in cases that it is required, like the case mentioned above. Thank you, Mikolaj Izdebski _______________________________________________ legal mailing list legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
