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* [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Solving the problem of huge number of wrong LICENSES=*GPL-[23]
@ 2018-08-26 10:39 Michał Górny
  2018-08-26 10:53 ` Mart Raudsepp
  2018-08-26 15:50 ` Ulrich Mueller
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 21+ messages in thread
From: Michał Górny @ 2018-08-26 10:39 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev; +Cc: licenses, qa

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Hi,

It seems that we suffer a major problem of developers wrongly
attributing *GPL-[23] licenses to ebuilds, when the correct variant is
*GPL-[23]+.  In proxy-maint, every second new package with LICENSE=GPL-
[23] is plain wrong.  I suspect part of the problem is that GitHub has
poor man's license recognition that does not distinguish between 'vN
only' and 'vN or newer' license variants, and similarly that a number of
contributors don't bother checking the license beyond COPYING/README.

Another part of the problem is that we don't have a really good way of
distinguishing verified correct uses of *GPL-[23].  So in the end, I end
up verifying the same packages over and over again unless I remember
that I've verified them.

Therefore, I would like to suggest the following:

1. introducing additional *-only licenses that explicitly indicate that
a newer version is not allowed, e.g. GPL-2-only, LGPL-3-only etc.

2. annotating the unsuffixed licenses with a warning that they may mean
either x-only or x+ due to frequent mistake.

3. make repoman warn whenever non-specific variant is used, telling
developers to verify whether it's x-only or x+.

4. start migrating packages to x-only or x+ appropriately.

5. eventually, remove the non-specific licenses and make repoman error
out with clear explanation.

What do you think?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 21+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2018-09-01  7:44 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2018-08-26 10:39 [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Solving the problem of huge number of wrong LICENSES=*GPL-[23] Michał Górny
2018-08-26 10:53 ` Mart Raudsepp
2018-08-26 11:09   ` Paweł Hajdan, Jr.
2018-08-26 11:15     ` Michał Górny
2018-08-26 11:33       ` Roy Bamford
2018-08-26 11:35       ` Rich Freeman
2018-08-26 17:03       ` Paweł Hajdan, Jr.
2018-08-27 22:46     ` Michael Mol
2018-08-31 22:31       ` Rich Freeman
2018-09-01  7:44       ` Paweł Hajdan, Jr.
2018-08-26 15:50 ` Ulrich Mueller
2018-08-26 17:14   ` Michał Górny
2018-08-26 18:14     ` Mart Raudsepp
2018-08-26 19:43       ` M. J. Everitt
2018-08-26 19:45       ` Francesco Riosa
2018-08-26 19:50         ` Francesco Riosa
2018-08-26 22:40   ` Jonas Stein
     [not found]   ` <3116195.kUm3yr6LE6@hermes>
2018-08-26 22:41     ` Robin H. Johnson
2018-08-27  2:55       ` Ulrich Mueller
     [not found]         ` <3623085.8soZgasqjt@hermes>
2018-08-27  7:35           ` Ulrich Mueller
2018-08-27  2:37     ` Ulrich Mueller

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