[Fedora-packaging] Re: License tag in packages

[Christopher Stone]

This has been brought up in discussions before:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-packaging/2006-March/msg00004.html

Let's please not get into what the License Tag should hold.  I really
do not want to have packages that look like this:

License: (GPL v2.0 or GPL v2.5) and ((MPL <= 1 or MPL =3) and (...))

and so on and so on...  I think it should be clear to people that the
Header fields are not meant to be used for this type of thing.  A
License tag should be something like:

License: GPL or Artistic

And actual license files should be placed in %doc.  If we are to make
any kind of standard on this, this is what it should be.  Complicating
the header tags is only going to complicate a lot of other things and
confuse new packagers.

The bottom line is that Header tags SHOULD not be used to determine the license.

We want to encourage people to read the ACTUAL license itself, not our
header tags.

All licenses header tags should be as generalized as possible with
just "GPL" for this very purpose.  We do not want new packagers
creating new header tags with all kinds of add ons..

License: GPL (except for clause 4 paragraph 2) and Artistic (with this
added on....) etc...

Once we go down the road of getting specific on the License tags then
we will be adding all kinds of crap to the tag.  Please let's not go
there.