[Fedora-legal-list] License tag status - 2007/08/29

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Wed, 2007-08-29 at 15:31 -0400, Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Sometime over the past few days the status of license tags crossed the
> 50% mark.  Current status:
> 
> 47.03% of spec files (2204 out of 4686) have invalid licenses (as of
> Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:26:29 +0000)
> 
> Attached are lists grouped by owner and package.
> 
> I have a few questions after poking through these lists.
> 
> There are multiple versions of the GFDL license (currently it's at 1.2
> on the FSF site).  However, the Licensing page doesn't mention any
> versions.  Several packages (21 to be precise), use GFDL+ as part of
> the license tag.  This is flagged as incorrect in the current report
> (and by rpmlint).  But should it be?  If for some reason a package
> ends up using GDFL 1.1 without any "or later version" statement,
> shouldn't that be respected?

Yeah, GFDL+ should be ok.

> Several perl packages (including perl itself) use the license tag:
> 
>     (GPL+ or Artistic) and (GPLv2+ or Artistic)
> 
> This isn't being parsed correctly by the regex used in rpmlint (which
> I've stolen and used in the check-licenses script).  The regex is:
> 
>     '\s(?:and|or)\s|[()]'
> 
> Does anyone have suggestions for improving this regex so it won't fail
> to parse the above license tag and others like it?

How did that regex get in there?

When I did the first pass of the changes for rpmlint, this was my regex:

'\sand\s|\sor\s|\(|\)'

It works properly on the perl license tag, with the exception that GPL+
or Artistic and GPLv2+ or Artistic are ok, and should be special cased
in rpmlint and your script (just Artistic is not OK).

~spot