Re: [gentoo-dev] Questions about licenses

[Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, 2005-06-15 at 13:18 +0200, Torsten Veller wrote:
> Why do we add a license to the licenses/ dir?
Because there should be an easy way to find licenses?
And you can do "emerge search foo", then read the license and decide
wether you want to install foo.

> And in addition: When should a license be added to licenses/ ?
When at least one ebuild uses a license that is not already there?

> Do we only add those licenses to define valid names for the LICENSE
> variable?
AFAIK the license variable is not really used (someone correct me if I'm mistakne, please)

> There are over 3MB in nearly 500 files. How will those licenses be
> classified if ACCEPT_LICENSES (GLEP 23) is implemented?
I guess groups ... OSI approved, "free", commercial, ...

> Does the language of the license matter? (selfhtml is in german)
I think licenses in English are preferred, but if it's only licensed with a german license ...
> Aren't MIT and MetaKit and ... the same license?
> Aren't X11 and cdegood and JamesClark and ... the same license?
Maybe there's one paragraph changed - I haven't looked at them yet.
> Should the licenses/ dir be cleaned?
If by cleaned you mean unused licenses removed yes. If by cleaned you
mean "reduced to the bare minimum" I'd say no.
> (Should placeholders be used as in MIT?)
> 
> What about all these /usr/share/doc/*/COPYING* files? Are they
> necessary if all licenses are in licenses/ ?
See first point. You want to read the license _before_ installing stuff
> (Am i asking too many questions? 
No ;-)
> Sorry, but i have the feeling that
> this whole license stuff is not useful atm and i don't see how we
> can deal with the great number of files in the future.)
I haven't seen this as a problem - it has worked quite well up to now.
Your concerns are valid, but as long as nobosy offers an alternative for
managing licenses, I wouldn't change our policy - doesn't seem broken to
me.

Patrick
-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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