Licensing guidelines changes

[Hans de Goede]

Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> Today, FESCo ratified a new policy for handling the License tag inside
> of package spec files.
> 
> You can read the new Licensing Guidelines here:
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/LicensingGuidelines
> 
> What does this mean for Fedora package maintainers? It means that you're
> going to need to do a little bit of work. We want F8 packages to have
> the correct license tag before we release F8.
> 

Okay, 2 more questions:

1: Currently the short for "zlib License" is just zlib. However most current 
zlib licensed packages currently contain the following as License tag: 
"zlib/libpng License" as that is what rpmlint wants. Changing all these tags 
merely because someone thought zlib would be more descriptive feels very wrong. 
I'm all for one standard for this. But why deviate from the table in rpmlint, a 
tool long used for reviews, in cases where this isn't necessary. Also I believe 
that no matter whats gets choisen as short form the long one should be 
"zlib/libpng License" and not just "zlib License", as now a days its most often 
refered to as the "zlib/libpng License" see for example:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/zlib-license.php

2: Why aren't the ND variants of the CC licenses allowed for content?

Quoting from:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-8be956fd12dbe4ae927e65c989e7e83b9fcc0b80
'In this case, the gamedata files can be packaged and included in Fedora, as 
long as the files meet the requirements for binary firmware.'

And then quoting from:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-adf31c383612aac313719f7b4f8167b7dcf245d2
'The License tag for any firmware that disallows modification should be set to: 
"Redistributable, no modification permitted"'

On basis of this the Games SIG has long been reviewing and approving game 
datafiles which lack permission to modify. Especially for for example music it 
is quite common for the artist to say: "You may do with this as you want, but 
you may not modify it, I made it and to me it is perfect as it is, so either 
take it as it is, or leave it".

Regards,

Hans