Re: Rv: What license for our packaging?
Eddy Petrișor wrote:
> Emmet Hikory a scris:
>> I'd like to also speak in favour of this choice. This ensures a
>> reduction in confusion over the licensing of any patches that may be
>> applied ("When using a patch system, are patches part of packaging"?
>> (1)). Although the use of a more permissive license may be be
>> convenient for the purposes of sharing various packaging tricks, the
>> majoirty of such tricks are likely to fall below the threshold for
>> which a license must be obtained in most jurisdictions, or be created
>
> Are you willing to gamble on that statement?
>
> I am *sure* I have big chances of messing of things if I consider that if I
> take a small chunk of some packaging trick (like I just did with
> tokyocabinet's refresh-patches mechanism in wormux), I am not the object of
> a copyright law in some significant amount of countries in the world.
I'm willing to gamble on it, but I understand if others are not.
For those jurisdictions where I have read copyright law, it is the
expression of an idea in the entirety that is protected, rather than
either the idea or portions of the test. Small fragments are
typically available for reuse, and the idea itself is very much
available for reuse. WIthin the constraints imposed by code, it may
well be that the implementation looks similar (except for some word
replacement), but I would think it could be argued that this was the
technically correct solution, and that it was more than a copy & paste
of a copyrighted work (especially where it represents a small fragment
of the complete work in both cases). Note that the previous
statements are not legal advice, and may not be valid in any given
jurisdiction.
> I don't see *any* benefit in using, by default, the same license as upstream
> in favour of a VPL, since those upstream license are from the get-go less
> permissive than the proposed licenses (except public domain, which isn't a
> license per se).
I can understand that argument, and suspect that the choice of any
license that is ultimately compatible with the upstream license would
probably meet most use cases related to patches or adaptation.
Agreement on a simple VPL license ought also meet this goal, although
it's a bit more text in debian/copyright (as one can't use "see
above").
> If you find MIT is less confusing, I would agree with it; my main point is
> to have:
> - a permissive license for our packaging
> - that license should always be used, by default, except *really*
> exceptional cases (think adopted package in which debian/* is licensed
> already with some other license)
>
> I simply proposed the BSD license because I found that in the package whose
> code I used.
I just fear documenting is "BSD" mostly because of the existence
of /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD. The text a the 2-paragraph BSD is
also fine with me (or I wouldn't suggest MIT or ISC, as from what I
have read, all three appear to be roughly equivalent legal
instruments).
> that is somewhat questionable, but I find that question waaaaay beyond the
> scope of this discussion, so please, let's stay focused.
Indeed. The very reason for the footnote asking it not be answered :)
--
Emmet HIKORY
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