Re: Missing license text in upstream packages
Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>Sven Bartscher <sven.bartscher@weltraumschlangen.de> writes:
>> but its content is not very overwhelming:
>>
>> Copyright <author> <year>
>> BSD license
...
>> I think this isn't sufficient to include the package in Debian. Is
>> this right?
I think it's entirely fine. It's not clear just from that text
exactly which BSD licence is meant but if this is made clear elsewhere
by the copyrightholder then that makes the statement unambiguous.
>Based only on that text? Yes, I agree. What other text in the work can
>be unambiguously interpreted as a license grant?
The text above is a clear statement that permissions is granted in
accorance with the `BSD licence'. (Which might mean the 2-clause,
3-clause or 4-clause version.) There is no other possible
interpretation of this statement by the author.
The file `pqueue.cabal' (which the git records also show was written
by the author and copyrightholder) clearly specifies `BSD3'.
I would argue that even separately, the file `pqueue.cabal' is a
human- and machine-readable statement of the licence for the work.
It's in writing and when provided by the copyrightholder clearly
intended as a statement of permission (which both humans and machines
can be expected to rely on).
But in this case it's not necessary to rely on that interpretation.
Certainly, taken together, these two documennts, written by the author
and committed at the same time (in commit c0e85fc), are a clear
indication of permission to use the code in accordance with what is
conventionally known as the 3-clause BSD licence.
If you disagree I think that (even though this is probably easily
fixed by a willing upstream) this might be a good example to ask a
real lawyer about, to demonstrate that this kind of nit-picking is not
helpful.
Ian.
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