Bug#28747: PROPOSED] GPL moved to /usr/share/common-licenses

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On 6 Apr 1999, Greg Stark wrote:

> Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia@iki.fi> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Apr 05, 1999 at 04:08:49PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > > I'm now looking for seconds for this proposal.
> 
> why?

According to FHS, /usr/doc should be empty in the long run.
This change has been already made in slink's base-files, with the idea
that people installing in a slink system a potato package which refers
to the new location will actually refer to an existing file in slink.

[ Why "licenses" and not "copyright"? Because /usr/doc/copyright used
to contain all the copyright files, plus the four common licenses
GPL, LGPL, Artistic and BSD. Once /usr/doc/copyright is almost empty
it makes sense to rename "copyright" to "licenses" ].

[ Why "common-licenses" and not "licenses"? Because if I put just
"licenses" I'm sure I will receive a bug report saying "license foo
is not included in the licenses directory. They are not all the licenses,
just a few common ones ].

I could use /usr/share/doc/common-licenses but I think this is too long to
be quoted in copyright files (after all, the GPL does not "document"
nothing, it is only a license).

I hope this explains the "why".

If you think /usr/share/common-licenses is definitely wrong and you think 
it should be changed again, please object, we will discuss about it, and
then this proposal will probably go to /dev/null.

Thanks.

-- 
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