The summariser must implement a comand-line switch (--license or --package) and generate a different type of output depending on how he/she was invoked. [...]Now, it's clear (even to me! ;-) and it sounds like a good proposal, ifsummarisers can (and are willing to) get used to such a `double system'...
Maybe some summarisers can say whether they would be willing to try this, or if some other changes are needed, please?
[...]
Could you explain what do you feel would be wrong with a list of licenses? Do you think it would be misunderstood?
The summaries sent to this list are already misreported, perhaps maliciously sometimes but surely from misunderstanding sometimes. I think a red/green list of licences would be abused in a similar way, no matter what we do to it. It seems better to use packages as examples. We may even find some licences apply to both packages which are free and ones which are non-free, perhaps because of author interpretation or things not covered in the main licence (patents?).
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MJR/slef My Opinion Only and not of any group I know
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