[Fedora-packaging] Including License doc in packages

[Tim Jackson]

Paul Howarth wrote:

>     SHOULD: If the source package does not include license text(s) as
>             a separate file from upstream, the packager SHOULD query
>             upstream to include it.
> 
> So upstream should be requested to add the license text in their
> distribution, but the package need not contain it until upstream does
> this.

Indeed, and getting license files in upstream packages is certainly a 
Good Thing in the general case. However, this ignores the case where 
(rightly or wrongly) it is not normally done upstream. (e.g. PEAR), 
probably because for tiny modules like PEAR modules where they are often 
installed in relatively large numbers, you would end up with a large 
number of duplicated license fields.

 > In the special case of the package maintainer being the same as
 > upstream, I think there is merit is pushing a bit harder for this.

I agree. In this particular case, I have no problem in including the 
license text in the package upstream, but at the same time I believe 
it's not conventionally done, so by the same consistency logic I 
probably shouldn't make one PEAR module be special, *just because* I 
happen to be maintaining a Fedora package for it. (I'm not saying there 
isn't necessarily a general argument for including license files in 
every module, just that that doesn't appear to be the convention at the 
moment, so even if I solve this particular issue by including it, there 
are millions of other modules out there that don't).


Tim