[Fedora-packaging] Proposal: Standardized License tags

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 15:18 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> As of this morning, the Fedora Core and Extras repositories have 2884
> src.rpm packages in them. Going through them, there are 191 different
> licenses listed.. many of them variants of the same name (and
> sometimes a mis-spelling). Some of the names are useful, and others
> are odd:
> 
> libselinux -- License: Public domain (uncopyrighted)

Isn't this due to unique restrictions around NSA generated source code?

> Something like
> 
> GNU GPL version 2 or higher [see /usr/share/fedora-licenses/GPL_v2]
> GNU LGPL version 2 or higher [see /usr/share/fedora-license/LGPL_v2]
> GNU GPL version 2 ONLY [see /usr/share/fedora-licenses/GPL_v2]
> Mozilla Public License (MPL) version 2.0 [see
> /usr/share/fedora-licenses/MPL_2.0]

Do we really need to overload this License field with all that? I'd
prefer:

GPL version 2 or higher
LGPL version 2 or higher
GPL version 2
MPL version 2.0

Where the syntax is:

$LICENSE_SHORT_NAME version $LICENSE_VERSION or higher

> it would also help to have something more clear on the packages listed
> as Distributable (all ~100 of them).. having to figure out the
> restrictions on each one is a pain.

Yeah, we should audit the "Distributable" packages. Got a list of those?

~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!