Re: Missing licenses in upstream source files
* Giacomo A. Catenazzi <cate@debian.org> [090320 10:08]:
> >Too often, though, such files are a set of license *terms* only (e.g.
> >the text of the GPL), with no copyright status or explicit *grant* of
> >license. That's not enough for Debian to know the rights of
> >recipients: mere inclusion of license terms is not a grant of license
> >under those terms.
>
> I don't agree. Only in journals you will find copyright notice and author
> on every pages. Don't mean that there are copyright problem
> on my favorite book, in inner pages. I think it the same for sources.
> You could write the license (or a reference) on every file, or you could
> write only a general file (e.g. COPYING), if it is clear that the
> license cover all the files.
While I agree that a single licence grant suffices, two limitations:
1) The grant should be in a form that it is reasonable to believe it
fits two the whole content:
a) simply a COPYING file in the tarball with the GPL in it does not
suffice, and especially not if the package uses autotools. As when those
are called the wrong way (i.e. without arguments), they just copy the
file in. Also in other cases just copying a license file in is hard to
take as an grant of an license, a little sentence above the license or
in the documentation or somewhere else like "this program is available
under ...." is a grant in my non-lawyerish eyes.
b) when package contains materials from obviously different origin[1], it
is far too likely that something went wrong upstream, so better ask
for clarification.
2) When being in upstream role or making suggestions to upstream,
please choose the "one license grant per non-trivial file" approach.
It makes lives easier for all people much easier. Especially as code
tends to hitch-hike in other programs. When you then have some code
that every search engine shows you is copied from somewhere else, but
you do not know where it origins from or if it actually has a free
license, things get ugly...
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
[1] like sources with different coding style, or code and other things
like images and so on.
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