permission to use spec files in other projects

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2008-01-02 at 20:29 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-01-02 at 15:18 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> >> Hi!
> >>
> >> The topic "permission to use Fedora spec files in other projects" is
> >> still on the EPEL agenda, as that's the area where the topic came up.
> >>
> >> @Board, @FESCo: Any progress on this? The last update on the topic and
> >> the discussion didn't solve the problem afaik. What's needed is afaics a
> >> official statement like "Spec files from Fedora are licensed as <foo> if
> >> not otherwise specified in the header of the spec file" from the Board
> >> in a official place.
> >>
> >> Reminder, the problem that needs to be solved: a random person (say: my
> >> neighbor who is no Fedora contributer and thus has never heard of or
> >> seen the CLA) should be sure that he won't get sued it he takes a SPEC
> >> file from the Fedora project, modifies it and publish SRPM build from it.
> >>
> >> Sure, it sounds a bit like a academic problem (which until now often is
> >> ignored), but it nevertheless should be solved IMHO.
> > 
> > As I've said before, my stance is this:
> > 
> > I don't think that the Fedora Board (or FESCo) can supercede the CLA,
> > which states that original contributions without prior license are
> > covered under the CLA. This is because the CLA is a signed agreement
> > explicitly to cover this case.
> > 
> > For the Fedora Board to say "all spec files are under the BSD license,
> > unless otherwise specified", it would directly conflict with the CLA.
> 
> Red Hat as the copyright holder
Red Hat is not the copyright holder - period.

>  can do this however IIUC which then can 
> choose to declare the license of the specs under a permissive license 
> via a header on the spec files. Wouldn't that solve this issue?
> 
> Rahul
> 
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