I personally favor the suggestion to move to a more mechanical construction of license expressions. While I appreciate the convenience of simple license expressions, I think that, with so many possible combinations of source licenses, usefully and reliably combining licenses under the “effective license” theory has required too much undocumented knowledge and/or amateur legal analysis. I am curious whether or not this would be accompanied by any changes to the requirements for documenting the license breakdown in multiple licensing scenarios[1]. – Ben Beasley [1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/LicensingGuidelines/#_multiple_licensing_scenarios On Mon, Jun 6, 2022, at 3:33 PM, Richard Fontana wrote: > Following up on this thread: A few of us in Red Hat discussed this > issue and settled on the idea that we should preserve the "licenses of > the contents of the binary rpm" policy, rather than the most obvious > alternative which would be "list the licenses found in the source > tarball". A major justification for that is that there isn't much > point in having the License: field merely replicate what you could get > by using a source code license scanner with some minimal analysis. > > However, it seems clear that "licenses of the contents of the binary > rpm" is ambiguous and this partly explains why today Fedora packagers > seem to be applying non-uniform standards to figuring out what to > include in the License: field. There also may continue to be cases > where different licensing of binary subpackages makes a difference to > some package consumers. > > We considered a few different options and we concluded that the best > approach is for the License: field to consist of a simple enumeration > of the licenses (including, possibly, disjunctive license expressions) > covering anything that ends up in a given binary RPM (whether compiled > to binary code or otherwise). The Fedora package maintainer is in the > best position to figure out what this subset of material in the source > code is, and how it appears to be licensed. > > Importantly, this "simply enumerate" approach means not attempting to > do any sort of further analysis such as GPL derivative works analysis, > algebraic simplifications or resolutions of long strings of > conjunctive license expressions based on longstanding community > conventions around FOSS licensing, etc. > > As before, any comments on this are most welcome! > > Richard > > > > > > > On Mon, May 23, 2022 at 12:37 PM Jilayne Lovejoy <jlovejoy@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> 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 >> >> >> Thanks! >> Jilayne >> _______________________________________________ >> packaging mailing list -- packaging@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> To unsubscribe send an email to packaging-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ >> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines >> List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/packaging@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure > _______________________________________________ > packaging mailing list -- packaging@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe send an email to packaging-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/packaging@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure _______________________________________________ packaging mailing list -- packaging@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to packaging-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/packaging@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
