:)
On 7/13/22 3:14 PM, Richard Fontana
wrote:
I would add, though I guess it's covered by what I said, that there are situations where it's not clear, as a matter of what's basically legal analysis, which side of a FOSS dual license is actually 'better'. A good example might be the Sun GPLv2 with Classpath Exception | CDDL case -- in the cases where that dual license applies, you can come up with arguments why one or the other license is preferable based on various factors. - Richard On Wed, Jul 13, 2022 at 4:37 PM Jilayne Lovejoy <jlovejoy@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:On 7/12/22 8:31 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:On Mon, Jun 6, 2022 at 5:51 PM Fabio Valentini <decathorpe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:On Mon, Jun 6, 2022 at 11:14 PM Richard Fontana <rfontana@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:On Wed, May 25, 2022 at 2:12 AM Otto Urpelainen <oturpe@xxxxxx> wrote:I wonder what you think about simple cases of "effective" licenses? For example, most Rust projects are dual-licensed as "Apache-2.0 OR MIT", but some odd ones are released under "MIT"-only or "Apache-2.0"-only licenses. So, for a binary package that contains code from both "Apache-2.0 OR MIT" and "MIT"-only projects, we usually "collapsed" that into just "MIT". Just enumerating the licenses in this case - "(Apache-2.0 OR MIT) AND MIT" - would be kind of silly, in my opinion.I wanted to follow up on this point since it does feel to me like we are stubbornly clinging to the practice of recording a FOSS dual license in the license tag, when not doing so could provide some simplification of license tag expressions. In my mind, there were a few reasons for this practice: (1) it was what Fedora traditionally did; (2) it matches general upstream culture (the idea of passing down a FOSS license choice through a chain of distributees; (3) there's a contrary corporate culture seen in some quarters of making sure that "bad" (from their perspective) FOSS licenses in a dual license scheme are eliminated, which I think is based mostly on ignorance and copyleftphobia and so forth, which we don't want to encourage or be associated with; (4) there isn't going to be a good, consistently-applicable basis for selecting one or the other license -- this is related to (3). (4) is also related to the "effective license" problem: there isn't really any coherent effective license doctrine that can be consistently applied. I guess also (5) which is a community counterpart to (3): you would end up with licenses being selected out of a dual license based on the individual preferences of a Fedora packager. In one case, a Fedora packager might personally prefer the Apache License 2.0 over MIT, in another case the opposite. This contradicts the tradition of passing down the choice to the user.Ha, you start out with "stubbornly clinging" and that maybe not recording the dual license in the license tag helping simply things, but then after reading your points (1) through (5), I felt even more convinced of the value in recording/retaining such info! I must say - the scenario where someone makes the choices (point (3) by example) can be really annoying for downstream recipients or downstream of downstream. I have memories of doing source code audits and running into this and relying on some form of "tribal knowledge" that there was a choice upstream that had gotten removed and then going upstream to find it, so the choice could be made "again". Fedora, as a free and open source software distro, need not make an explicit choice between two free and open source licenses (in the way a commercial software distribution might), so the policy of passing along the original choice makes sense to me as a matter of convenience (for downstream recipients) and in keeping with the principles of Fedora being free and open more generally.Adding the full "Apache-2.0 OR MIT" choice from the first project seems to be pointless, since it actually cannot result in a choice of license - because that choice is already forced by the "MIT"-only second project. Please correct me if this analysis is wrong.sort of, but given the above points, I don't think it hurts to capture "(Apache-2.0 OR MIT) AND MIT" - it's accurate and somewhat obvious as to what is going on.I understand this point but the idea that the choice is forced seems to be a form of "effective license" analysis. I am not dismissive of the idea since I think there is something fundamentally unclear about what composite licensing means. However, the general problems with effective license analysis apply to this case too. Richard _______________________________________________ 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
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