[Fedora-legal-list] Does every file in the upstream tarball need to have a license?

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 05/13/2009 04:05 PM, David Malcolm wrote:
> However, the upstream tarball does not contain a license file.  Only
> some of the files within the tarball contain license headers.  I believe
> that every file with a "Copyright" also contains an MIT license grant.
> 
> (There's also an embedded copy of jquery, which is dual licensed MIT and
> GPL)
> 
> The setup.py does state "MIT" in the license field, in the usual place
> for such metadata (although said file is itself GPLv2 licensed).
> 
> Is this a problem for Fedora inclusion?

Well, you should ask upstream to fix any code files missing copyright
and license attribution. Barring that, they should at least clarify to
you what the license is on the unmarked files.

Without any sort of statement as to the overall code license (a mention
on the project's website, or an email from upstream would suffice), we
cannot assume we have any permissions on those files, thus, they're
non-free.

~spot