License text in binary packages

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Mon, 2005-09-05 at 06:00 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> 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.

Not if the upstream author lists the license of the package. If they say
"application foo is GPL", but do not include the license text, then
adding the text to the binary package is not relicensing it.

> > 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.

I'm not really sure how you'd achieve this. And even if you did, you
could include the text of the "before" and "after" licenses in %doc.

> 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 simply involves multiple files in %doc. Never said it was pretty in
the worst corner case, but its by no means impossible.

> > 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.

Your doubts are duly noted, but Red Hat legal advised us to take this
course of action, it was discussed by FESCO (not just me), and it was
decided as a must.

Basically, Red Hat wants us to cover all the bases legally in Extras,
and we're going to do it, even if it could end up being unnecessary in
the long run. As to whether it will happen in Core, I have no idea, and
no control over that whatsoever.

If you (or anyone) comes across any complicated or difficult to decide
cases of licensing, then we'll deal with those cases at that time.

~spot
-- 
Tom "spot" Callaway: Red Hat Senior Sales Engineer || GPG ID: 93054260
Fedora Extras Steering Committee Member (RPM Standards and Practices)
Aurora Linux Project Leader: http://auroralinux.org
Lemurs, llamas, and sparcs, oh my!