[Fedora-packaging] Packaging of license file in case of extracted sources

[Ralf Corsepius]

Jussi Lehtola wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 11:22 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> 
> [clip]
> 
>> Somewhat oversimplified, this guideline essentially means: "If the 
>> tarball has a license file, then you must include it - if it doesn't, 
>> you must not create one"
> 
> 
> I've never encountered hitherto an interpretation in which a license
> file has to be created if upstream hasn't supplied any.
Well, packagers wanting to add license files had been a common case in 
the early Fedora days.

It had been (and still occasionally is) a typical packaging newcomer 
mistake, originating from people who interpret "include license files" 
as "must add one, if not present".

You can still find packages which do so in Fedora.

> AFAIK that is
> the policy in Debian, not in Fedora.
No idea what Debian does.

> Maybe it should be made clearer in the guidelines what must be done also
> in this case.
This section is almost as old as Fedora. It has hardly been a problem 
before.

Ralf