License text in binary packages

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Sun, 2005-09-04 at 20:24 -0500, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> This is just a reminder: YOU MUST PUT THE LICENSE TEXT as a %doc in your
> Fedora Extra packages.
IMO, this decision is a fault, because it puts contributors into a
legally questionable and attackable position.

>  Even perl packages. The only exception to this is
> when the package is Public Domain, and even then, if there is some text
> file that says as much, you should include it as %doc.
> 
> Specifically, concern was raised that the GPL did not require this. Greg
> took this specific question to Red Hat Legal, and their response was
> that it is a requirement of the GPL that either the full 
> license or the link to the license be included -- but Red Hat Legal
> recommend including the full license text as a best practice. They
> advised us to keep this guideline as a "MUST" in the case of the GPL.
This contradicts the FSF's lawyer's recommendations who, wrt. the GPL say:
Detached license files probably will not withstand trial at US courts,
only licenses inlined into source code will.

Also, I doubt one is permitted to add license files to packages without
prior permission of the original authors, because this implies
"re-licensing" packages.

> Rather than submit every possible license to legal to see whether or not
> they would advice us to include the text or not, I proposed to the
> Fedora Extras Steering Committee (FESCO) that we keep the guideline as
> it is, and require all licenses used in a package to be included in text
> format, as %doc, in the %files section of that package. The proposal
> passed.
This is impracticable, because 
a) Licensing of sources doesn't necessarily have to match with licenses
of binaries.
b) There exist packages, where almost each source file carries a license
of its own.

As an exercise, I'd recommend you trying to package a Fedora->Cygwin
cross toolchain. Binutils are GPL'ed, GCC is GPL'ed with exceptions,
Cygwin libs are GPL'ed, newlib binaries are "BSD-like" with several
dozens of different licenses, newlib sources are GPL'ed.

> This is MUST item number 7 in the Things To Check On Review section in
> the PackageReviewGuidelines:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageReviewGuidelines#head-05a78c7ca440544397657679f87fbdbd84d9be28
> 
> This is not optional, this is the direction we're taking based on review
> with Red Hat Legal.
> 
> Fedora Core packagers: I don't have control over how you make your
> packages (yet!) but you should also strongly consider doing this. 
Let me put it this way:

If this legal requirement is as important as you seem to regard it, it
would be legally grossly negligible to RH not to update their packages,
ASAP.

However, as RH, other Linux distributors and package vendors ship their
packages without it for > 10 years, I am having strong doubts on FESCO
decision rsp. RH-legal's advice and its importance.

Ralf