License of .spec files

[Marek Mahut]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> On 19.08.2007 15:52, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
>> On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 09:49 +0200, Marek Mahut wrote:
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I have a question, probably for spot, what's the license of .spec file
>>> it-self? Is it under license of a product or indirectly signed by CLA?
>>> Is it a good idea to include the license specification about the spec
>>> file in the .spec file?
>> FWIW, licensing the .spec files never made much sense to me.
>>
>> 1. There's very little original copyrightable work in a spec file.
> 
> Well, some spec files can be quite complex. More complex than some small
> scripts that come with a copyright notice that often is longer than the
> script-part itself.
> 
>> 2. The license of the spec file itself would have nothing to do with the
>> contents of the RPM, other than that the spec file would also be
>> included as a separate file inside the RPM. So, the spec file is not
>> automatically under the same license as the bits being packaged up.
> 
> +1 -- I'd say if we license them then the maintainer or Fedora as a
> whole should pick a license for their spec files.
> 
>> 3. Is it indirectly signed by the CLA? More like directly.[...]
> 
> Maybe, but that's not obvious to outside parties. Let's say a outside
> 3rd party that maintains a public rpm-repo wants to pick up a Fedora
> package and its spec file for its repo. Then that 3rd party repo wants
> to be sure that Fedora doesn't sue them today or in the future for
> taking Fedora's spec file. Explicitly licensing our spec files would
> make would solve this problem -- currently it's more a grey area.
> 
> IOW: I think putting a short license text in the spec files (e.g. this
> is "Public Domain" or "licensed as WTFPL" ) would be a good idea.

And what happens when I want to import (modified) spec file from other
project (upstream) licensed under GPLv2 for example?

> CU
> knurd

-- 
Marek Mahut                           http://www.fedoraproject.org/
Fedora Project                              http://www.jamendo.com/