[gentoo-dev] License groups in ebuilds

[gentoo-dev] License groups in ebuilds

[Ulrich Mueller]

Long standing problem: Some of our most used license tags like "GPL-2"
are ambiguous, denoting either GPL-2 only or GPL-2 or later.

One solution would be license groups in ebuilds, which could be added
to EAPI 5 [1]. Disadvantage would be that they cannot be used in
previous EAPIs.

Alternatively, we could create separate license files like GPL-2+, as
suggested in [2], especially since the "plus" versions now have their
own entry in the SPDX license list [3]. Are there any other licenses
besides *GPL and FDL that would require such a file?

What do you think?

Ulrich

[1] <https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=287192>
[2] <http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_6c004fd342c57062d71455109fa52ac0.xml>
[3] <http://www.spdx.org/licenses/>

Re: [gentoo-dev] License groups in ebuilds

[Kent Fredric]

On 10 May 2012 21:39, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>. Are there any other licenses
> besides *GPL and FDL that would require such a file?

I'd welcome groups so we can have a "Perl_5" group. The lions share of
modules published on CPAN are licensed "Under the same license as Perl
5 Itself", which implies "|| ( GPL-2 Artistic-1 )"

And that boilerplate stanza is thus in many of the Perl Modules ebuilds.


-- 
Kent

perl -e  "print substr( \"edrgmaM  SPA NOcomil.ic\\@tfrken\", \$_ * 3,
3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );"

http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz

[gentoo-dev] Re: License groups in ebuilds

[Torsten Veller]

* Kent Fredric <kentfredric@gmail.com>:
> I'd welcome groups so we can have a "Perl_5" group. The lions share of
> modules published on CPAN are licensed "Under the same license as Perl
> 5 Itself", which implies "|| ( GPL-2 Artistic-1 )"

Perl is licensed as

| This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
| it under the terms of either:
|
| 	a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
| 	Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
| 	later version, or
|
| 	b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.

The perl-module.eclass offers a default LICENSE as
LICENSE="${LICENSE:-|| ( Artistic GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-3 )}"

So if a distribution uses "the same license as Perl 5 itself" you can
just drop the LICENSE from the ebuild (as long no former eclass sets its
own LICENSE).

I've further added comments to the LICENSE in the ebuilds if it does not
use "the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself"
but "or-later" group of licenses (like GPL-2+ or Artistic+...).
-- 
Regards

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: License groups in ebuilds

[Ciaran McCreesh]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 512 bytes --]

On Sat, 12 May 2012 21:05:06 +0200
Torsten Veller <tove@gentoo.org> wrote:
> The perl-module.eclass offers a default LICENSE as
> LICENSE="${LICENSE:-|| ( Artistic GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-3 )}"
> 
> So if a distribution uses "the same license as Perl 5 itself" you can
> just drop the LICENSE from the ebuild (as long no former eclass sets
> its own LICENSE).

That's definitely not going to work if the 'inherit' comes at the top
of the ebuild, and is severely dodgy if it doesn't...

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

[gentoo-dev] Re: License groups in ebuilds

[Torsten Veller]

* Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com>:
> On Sat, 12 May 2012 21:05:06 +0200
> Torsten Veller <tove@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > The perl-module.eclass offers a default LICENSE as
> > LICENSE="${LICENSE:-|| ( Artistic GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-3 )}"
> > 
> > So if a distribution uses "the same license as Perl 5 itself" you can
> > just drop the LICENSE from the ebuild (as long no former eclass sets
> > its own LICENSE).
> 
> That's definitely not going to work if the 'inherit' comes at the top
> of the ebuild, and is severely dodgy if it doesn't...

What doesn't work?
-- 
Regards

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: License groups in ebuilds

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Sat, 12 May 2012, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:

> On Sat, 12 May 2012 21:05:06 +0200
> Torsten Veller <tove@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> The perl-module.eclass offers a default LICENSE as
>> LICENSE="${LICENSE:-|| ( Artistic GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-3 )}"
>> 
>> So if a distribution uses "the same license as Perl 5 itself" you can
>> just drop the LICENSE from the ebuild (as long no former eclass sets
>> its own LICENSE).

> That's definitely not going to work if the 'inherit' comes at the top
> of the ebuild, and is severely dodgy if it doesn't...

I have to agree with Ciaran. The eclass should simply assign LICENSE
unconditionally. Ebuilds can override it if necessary.

And if an ebuild inherits two eclasses that both define LICENSE, then
it's probably better if the ebuild contains its own explicit
definition.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] License groups in ebuilds

[Sebastian Pipping]

On 05/10/2012 11:39 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> Are there any other licenses besides *GPL and FDL that would require such a file?
> 
> What do you think?

The "GPL-2+" file workaround doesn't sound to bad.

Call be picky, but we could actually use a "GPL-3+" file, too.  With
that we could distinguish "exactly GPL 3" and "GPL 3 or later" properly
on our end, no matter if GPL 4 ever comes or not.

Best,



Sebastian

Re: [gentoo-dev] License groups in ebuilds

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Sat, 16 Jun 2012, Sebastian Pipping wrote:

> On 05/10/2012 11:39 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> Are there any other licenses besides *GPL and FDL that would
>> require such a file?
>> 
>> What do you think?

> The "GPL-2+" file workaround doesn't sound to bad.

> Call be picky, but we could actually use a "GPL-3+" file, too.
> With that we could distinguish "exactly GPL 3" and "GPL 3 or later"
> properly on our end, no matter if GPL 4 ever comes or not.

Yes, that was the idea. Otherwise we would have to start over again
whenever a GPL-4 appears.

AFAICS, we would need 9 additional license files, namely GPL-{1,2,3}+,
LGPL-{2,2.1,3}+, and FDL-{1.1,1.2,1.3}+.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] License groups in ebuilds

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Sat, 16 Jun 2012, Ulrich Mueller wrote:

>>>>> On Sat, 16 Jun 2012, Sebastian Pipping wrote:
>> The "GPL-2+" file workaround doesn't sound to bad.

>> Call be picky, but we could actually use a "GPL-3+" file, too.
>> With that we could distinguish "exactly GPL 3" and "GPL 3 or later"
>> properly on our end, no matter if GPL 4 ever comes or not.

> Yes, that was the idea. Otherwise we would have to start over again
> whenever a GPL-4 appears.

> AFAICS, we would need 9 additional license files, namely GPL-{1,2,3}+,
> LGPL-{2,2.1,3}+, and FDL-{1.1,1.2,1.3}+.

Coming back to this, because the council has now rejected license
groups for EAPI 5. I would then create above-mentioned files in the
licenses dir.

Is it sufficient to include a reference to GPL-2 etc. like this:

╓────[ GPL-2+ ]
║ GNU General Public License version 2, or any later version.
║ See GPL-2 or GPL-3 for the full text of these licenses.
╙────

Or should the full license text of GPL-2 be repeated in the GPL-2+
file?

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] License groups in ebuilds

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Sat, 15 Sep 2012, Ulrich Mueller wrote:

>> AFAICS, we would need 9 additional license files, namely GPL-{1,2,3}+,
>> LGPL-{2,2.1,3}+, and FDL-{1.1,1.2,1.3}+.

> Coming back to this, because the council has now rejected license
> groups for EAPI 5. I would then create above-mentioned files in the
> licenses dir.

Committed and added to appropriate license groups.

Concerning transition: This issue isn't the most pressing of our
problems, so IMHO transition should be done gradually, whenever an
ebuild is touched for another reason. We can evaluate things again in
a year from now.

If you check the license of a package and find that e.g. GPL-2
(without the plus sign) is correct, then it would be useful to add a
comment "GPL-2 only" to the ebuild. This is to avoid checking packages
twice.

Ulrich