Summary of the 2007-08-07 Packaging Committee meeting
Hans de Goede
j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl
Wed Aug 8 17:36:35 UTC 2007
Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> * Clarifying what the License: tag refers to (source or resulting
> binary):
> * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/LicenseClarification
> * There was plenty of interesting discussion here; it's a delicate
> issue but the current tendency is to let License: refer to the
> license on the source packages.
>
Erm, can we word that as "let License: refer to the license of the parts of the
sources used to build the binaries. IOW not any licenses inherited from
libraries used"
This clarification is important to me because for example bochs contains a src
file which is GPLv2 only, where as the rest is GPLv2+, but unless a configure
option we don't use is passed, this GPLv2 only file isn't compiled in so the
resulting binaries are GPLv2+.
Also the way it is phrased now, there us no use in doing sub-packages for
different licensed parts as is currently adviced, since the sources as a whole
are under the most restrictive license.
And even with the clarification, I'm not at all sure this is wise. I think it
would be better to say that this practice is concidered OK, because a packager
is not expected to trace all the licenses of all linked in libs (and their
deps), but that if the packager knows that a more restrictive license from a
lib makes the package itself more restrictively licensed then the package
source license, that the packager then is encouraged to put in the more
restrictive license?
This is esp important for libs, so that people can check license issues with
libs, without having to walk the entire dep chain.
For example I've just split of the id3tag plugin for imlib2 into its own
subpackage because libid3tag is GPL licensed, whereas imlib and its other deps
are MIT/BSD (ish), and I've used GPLv2+ as License: field for this subpackage.
Regards,
Hans
More information about the Fedora-maintainers
mailing list