On Sat, 2007-07-21 at 10:58 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote: > On 7/21/07, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Sat, 2007-07-21 at 04:37 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote: > > > Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > > > > > > On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 22:32 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote: > > > >> On 7/20/07, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > >> > So, the new FESCo is going to act as the "Fedora License Police" > > > >> > > > >> Always so negative. > > > > > > > > Well, why should I change my opinion on something which had been > > > > repeatedly discussed to death (E.g. on FPC meetings) and which I > > > > consider to be "silly and naive"? > > > > > > And that was before GPLv3 was released, mind you... > > A fact which doesn't matter at all > > > > > > 1. Actually, the GPL case is a comparatively simple case, because it's > > widely used. > > > > The situations rendering such "license tagging" absurd are the "not so > > far spread" and "exotic" licenses, which > > * FESCO will never be able to handle due to lack of legal knowledge. > > * RPM's license-tag will not be able to handle without a "license tag" > > registry/Fedora license tag administration office. > > > > 2. Package maintainers are supposed to check their packages for license > > compatibility. Otherwise Fedora will need a "licensing police". > > > > 3. We did cover GPLv3 in our discussions on FPC meetings. > > I tend to agree that the problem is going to lie in the more exotic > licenses. I think it would be *relatively* easy to mandate specifying > GPLv2, GPLv2+, GPLv3, GPLv3+, LGPLv2, LGPLv2+, LGPLv3, LGPLv3+, (And > is there an LGPLv2.1 as well?). ... and these are by far not all variants of the [L]GPLv2 ;) Consider e.g. the "GPLv2 w/ <some exceptions>" and the "dual licensed cases". Also consider the impact on backporting patches against GPLv3'd versions of a package to their GPLv2(+) predecessors. E.g. the GCC project currently is discussing the legal impact of back-porting upstream (==GPLv3) changes to older releases (e.g. gcc-4.2) and/or vendor forks/branches (such as Apple's GCC or RH's). Also, though the FSF has a GPL* compatibility matrix, they don't provide much help for other licenses' compatibility. I.e. at least I consider the implications of GPLv3'd run-time packages on packages being licensed differently to be widely unclear at this point in time. To put it differently: To which extend is the old "GPL* vs. free-license compatibility list" still valid? > (License proliferation, anyone?) But > going further in the License tag is going to be descending into > madness. That's what I wanted to express - There lies madness and insanity inside of the license tagging. > I'll wait for spot's proposal before jumping the gun on what > I believe to be practical. IMO, it needs to be a copyright-specialized lawyer to be able to clarify the situation. Neither the FPC, FAB nor FESCo are able to handle such situations. > I have a question that I would like answered before the Packaging > Meeting that will help clarify some things for me: Who is the target > audience of this information? The FPC decided not to establish > guidelines WRT License tags (other than being accurate) before because > the target audience was end-users and we decided that end users should > never take the license tag as authoritative. If the target audience > is internal developers, then the tag remains a hint. IMO, the rpm license tag is both: informative to end-users and a hint to developers. Active developers will have to carefully check a package "they use" or "derive their works from" in any case. Ralf -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
