On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 08:11:53PM -0500, John Belmonte scribbled: [snip] > I'm interested in the notion of license metadata for file packages (in > the general sense)-- what the semantics would be, whether or how it > could be useful, etc. As someone pointed out, there is no such thing > for Debian packages. But ITP's do have the "License" field, so I was > asking about the semantics of an entry like "GPL, LGPL, public domain". > Here it means that parts of the package are covered by one license, > parts by another, etc. It doesn't always mean this. See [snip] My point was to show the prospective reviewers of the ITP that the package is heterogenous license-wise. Since putting only GPL in the license would be presenting a false image of the status quo, I chose to list the licenses enumerated by the author of the library as the ones present in the package as a whole. As I stated in one mail (I think) I trust that the precision of information is crucial in cases like this. In fact, I'm considering adding a list of files in the library and their associated licenses to the README.Debian in the package once it hits Sid (I've uploaded it already). I grew aware of problems with licensing while working on Caudium. We, as the Caudium Group, don't own the copyrights to all the code, but we do own a huge part of it. I usually license my code under LGPL/MPL (considering IPL now) but Caudium as a whole is still GPL. In such a crazy situation, it is crucial that users/developers have detailed information about what parts of a package are licensed under which licenses and, first of all, that there exist various licenses to begin with. It really saves one a lot of trouble later on. regards, marek
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