Jilayne Lovejoy kirjoitti 23.5.2022 klo 19.31:
Hi Fedora legal and packaging,
I'm cross-posting this, as I think it's relevant to both groups.
The current policy for filling out the license field of the spec file
(as described at
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/LicensingGuidelines/
) states, "The License: field refers to the licenses of the contents of
the binary rpm. When in doubt, ask."
As we consider how to improve documentation related to Fedora licensing,
it would be helpful to hear people's thoughts on the following:
1) how do you (package maintainers) interpret this policy in practice?
2) what further information/documentation about this policy would be
helpful?
3) should this policy be different, and if so, how?
4) any other related thoughts or observations
As a maintainer of modest amount of packages and occassional new package
reviewer,
the issues I have with the current licensing policy as linked above are:
1. The "effective license" thing that is already discussed in another
thread does not appear in the policy at all, and it does not appear in
Fedora Licensing page, either. The only places that mention it that I
have discovered are Licensing:FAQ [1] and random discussions at mailing
lists and so on. This makes it quite difficult to understand if
"effective licensing" is actually part of the policy or not. It would be
easier to understand its status if it was covered in the policy itself.
The policy itself should be unambiguous and possible to interpret
without reference to any FAQ. A FAQ should not introduce new
requirements and exceptions.
2. In general, it is confusing that the policy is split between
Packaging Guidelines, Fedora Licensing main page and, apparently, also
the FAQ. How can I determine if any given docs or wiki page is
authorative? Would it be possible to consolidate everything that is
authorative to a single page and declare it such?
3. Specifically related to the effective licensing question, MIT and BSD
basically *only* ask to include the license text when shipping binaries.
The effective licensing thing then erases those licenses, if there is
GPL somewhere in the mix. The cognitive dissonance between wanting to
honor upstream licenses and not shipping them due to effective licensing
is serious. Since MIT and BSD are very common licenses, and code under
them is also very commonly found embedded in otherwise GPL projects, I
would like the licensing policy explicitly cover this situation and
explain why it is allowed to not ship the MIT/BSD license in this case.
(Perhaps, it would be good to revisit the part of the policy that
discussed shipping license texts and consider, why is that required: It
is in order to honor upstream licenses, or for some other reason, like
end user convenience?)
[1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:FAQ
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