Licensing guidelines changes

[Hans de Goede]

Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 22:27 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>> Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
>>> Today, FESCo ratified a new policy for handling the License tag inside
>>> of package spec files.
>>>
>>> You can read the new Licensing Guidelines here:
>>>
>>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/LicensingGuidelines
>>>
>>> What does this mean for Fedora package maintainers? It means that you're
>>> going to need to do a little bit of work. We want F8 packages to have
>>> the correct license tag before we release F8.
>>>
>> Okay, 2 more questions:
>>
>> 1: Currently the short for "zlib License" is just zlib. However most current 
>> zlib licensed packages currently contain the following as License tag: 
>> "zlib/libpng License" as that is what rpmlint wants. Changing all these tags 
>> merely because someone thought zlib would be more descriptive feels very wrong. 
>> I'm all for one standard for this. But why deviate from the table in rpmlint, a 
>> tool long used for reviews, in cases where this isn't necessary. Also I believe 
>> that no matter whats gets choisen as short form the long one should be 
>> "zlib/libpng License" and not just "zlib License", as now a days its most often 
>> refered to as the "zlib/libpng License" see for example:
>> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/zlib-license.php
> 
> We've actually fixed rpmlint to match the new license table. :)
> 
> I'll update the long name to be "zlib/libpng License".

Erm, in response to the second part of my question:

 > I have some questions missing from the QA part you posted. What about
 > freely redistributable but not modifiable contect, does that get:
 > "Freely redistributable without restriction"
 > or:
 > "Redistributable, no modification permitted"
 >
 > And since content and firmware AFAIK are sort of the same exception,
 > shouldn't these 2 be made more consisty, and shouldn't the latter thus be:
 > "Freely redistributable without restriction, no modification permitted" ?
 >

You wrote, you kept "Redistributable, no modification permitted" the same to 
avoid churn, the why not also keep "zlib/libpng License" as "zlib/libpng 
License" to avoid churn? It isn't all that important since we will need a mass 
rebuild anyways, but I still wonder.

>> 2: Why aren't the ND variants of the CC licenses allowed for content?
>>
>> Quoting from:
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-8be956fd12dbe4ae927e65c989e7e83b9fcc0b80
>> 'In this case, the gamedata files can be packaged and included in Fedora, as 
>> long as the files meet the requirements for binary firmware.'
>>
>> And then quoting from:
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-adf31c383612aac313719f7b4f8167b7dcf245d2
>> 'The License tag for any firmware that disallows modification should be set to: 
>> "Redistributable, no modification permitted"'
>>
>> On basis of this the Games SIG has long been reviewing and approving game 
>> datafiles which lack permission to modify. Especially for for example music it 
>> is quite common for the artist to say: "You may do with this as you want, but 
>> you may not modify it, I made it and to me it is perfect as it is, so either 
>> take it as it is, or leave it".
> 
> Its an oversight, I'll amend it now. Thanks for pointing that out.
> 

I'm glad to hear that.

Regards,

Hans