License text in binary packages

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Mon, 2005-09-05 at 13:13 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Sep 2005 23:37:32 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
> > 
> > How are we supposed to deal with cases where the source did not ship a 
> > full copy of the license in order to add to %doc easily?  We are 
> > supposed to add another copy of the license to each SRPM?
> 
> Do we have examples for this? (other than a missing GPL "COPYING" file)

I just imported a LICENSE for pexpect.  The license is The Python
Software Foundation license.  When I did this, I was a bit confused.
Unlike the GPL, the PSF explicitly names "python" as "the software".
Would the license need to have every instance of python changed to
pexpect?  Would this be "relicensing"?

foremost, which I posted about to fedora-extras earlier is GPL.  But due
to its history as a work created by the US Government it was listed as
Public Domain [1] in some places.  After exploring with upstream, it was
discovered that most of the "GPL" work done on foremost was also US
Government work and therefore Public Domain [1].  The project had
included one file from another, GPL, project so the FSF analysis still
applied.  So in this case, the license file was missing and it was
decidedly non-obvious for a packager how the package should be licensed.
If I had included one license with upstream's blessing but it turned out
that they didn't have the right to use that license, who's at fault?

I think the "packagers adding a LICENSE file" policy needs to be looked
over and questions about it need to be FAQ'd.
 
-Toshio

[1]  The original author of foremost believes that US Government work
_cannot_ be copyrighted (unless authorized by Congress).  So it isn't
simply public domain, it's perpetually public domain.  That's why the
FSF advises that code contributed by US Federal Government employees to
GPL projects is contributed as public domain.  Here's the relevant
section of the United States Code:

17 USC 105. Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works

Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of
the United States Government, but the United States Government is not
precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by
assignment, bequest, or otherwise. 

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