permission to use spec files in other projects

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 02.01.2008 16:33, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-01-02 at 20:29 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> 
>> Red Hat as the copyright holder 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?
> 
> Well, let me be more clear (and verbose) about this:
> What the CLA says:
> [...]
> Now, Red Hat can sublicense the spec files, but the previously granted
> rights are still granted. So really, what we'd be able to do is say:
> 
> /***
> 
> The license of all otherwise unlicensed Contributions to Fedora from
> Fedora Contributors (under the Fedora CLA) is as follows:
> [...] 
> ***/
>
> Why? Because that's what the CLA says. And we can't take that away by
> default without invalidating the CLA.

+1 -- And alternative would be: ask the Fedora contributers to specify
the license of their spec file.

> As I said before, Red Hat (or
> anyone receiving a copy) could sublicense the spec file, but anyone
> wishing to could simply choose to ignore that sublicense and instead use
> the grants given by the CLA to the work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the CLA doesn't give 3rd partys that get
Software from Fedora any rights as the CLA is a contract between
Contributers and Fedora/Red Hat. Thus if my neighbor gets spec files
from Fedora then he can't know if what he got is bound to the CLA.

Further: Is there a single CLA? Beside cla_fedora there are other groups
in the accounts system -- cla_dell, cla_ibm and cla_redhat. Outsiders or
I don't know how the CLA looks that members of that groups signed.

What really confuses me: Our own package review guidelines say: "SHOULD:
If the source package does not include license text(s) as a separate
file from upstream, the packager SHOULD query upstream to include it.".
Why don't we obey out own rules and clearly specify what the code (spec
files in this case) we release is licensed as (that is the reasons for
that rule afaics).

CU
knurd