Christopher Stone wrote:
[current usage of License]
It is not inconsistant:
734 GPL
1 GPL version 2 or newer
plus
1 GPL version 2 or later.
1 GPL version 2 or later
1 GPLv2
OK, there's certainly a majority.
The one package that uses "GPL version 2 or newer" should be fixed to
just say "GPL" to conform with all 734 other packages.
This was pretty well established in the thread.
There were also some convincing arguments the other way, that I don't
think were repudiated.
Then perhaps the License field should always be omitted, or populated
with "See documentation".
Yes, or how about "Fedora friendly" with a link showing valid Fedora
licenses. But I don't think it's is going too far to provide a
minimal amount of information such as GPL or BSD.
OK, so what we're talking about really is treating "License" like
"License group" or something. Fair enough.
b) the very shaky legal basis of arbitrarily renaming licenses (someone
in the thread you linked to pointed out that it may not be binding, but
a packager misleading users could arguably have some liability)
If it is legally binding, then we are legally bound to include the
entire text of the License in the header tag.
There is a difference between "legally binding" and "misleading in a
legal sense". Hypothetically, I may not have a duty to tell you the
license of a file at all, but if I assertively tell you it is "XXX" and
you go ahead and distribute it under "XXX v2" when actually its license
is "XXX v3" which has different terms that you breach, then at the least
I have misled you and caused you to do bad stuff that you might not
otherwise have done (notwithstanding the fact that you should have
checked the details), regardless of whether or not this in any way makes
me liable to you. (It probably doesn't, but I don't want to encourage
people to do stuff with free software which goes against the author's
wishes and, for example, GPLv3 is shaping up to have notable differences
to GPLv2 in at least some ways)
c) the fact that what you're saying is inconsistent with what at least
some Core packagers are doing
I agree, let's make a standard and stick to it.
That's all I'm getting at really :)
But please try to see the logic in the arguments I have presented.
> It is simply a tag and should not be taken for anything more than that.
I do, honest I do. And I for one treat it exactly like that when I'm
deciding how to use a bit of software: I wouldn't dream of relying on
the License: tag; I would always go and check the actual source
docs/source code etc. But I also don't want to mislead people who might,
without any ill intent, not be so diligent.
All I'm looking for I suppose is a reasonable, reasoned and "approved"
(in some meaningful sense) wiki page (not archived list thread) that is
linked from PackagingGuidelines and which I (and everyone else) can look
at each time I do a package and know what to put in the License field.
Whether or not it corresponds to my personal preferences is not really
important; I'll follow it if it's generally agreed (and preferably given
the nod by FESco).
The fact that this issue has come up several times means that a
*conclusive* resolution is definitely needed.
Tim
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