Sorry for the late reply, I had forgotten about this. On 22/11/11 14:29, Charles Plessy wrote: > Le Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 11:08:44PM +0000, Ximin Luo a écrit : >> >> The fundamental problem: >> >> DEP5 is unclear about what is meant by a "license". > > Dear Ximin, > > thank you for your comments and for pointing out that the examples in the > current draft are not consistent with the draft's syntax. I will file a bug > about this later. > Um, I was not aware that I had made this point. What I was trying to argue however, is that - License: paragraphs are not defined in a good way - because of this bad/unclear definition, DEP5 uses "license notices" as examples for License: stanzas, which I argued is wrong. I don't think this is an "inconsistency" as such, but I do think DEP5 needs to be fixed to address this. > I would like to re-frame the discussion and remind that, at the base of the > DEP, there are the requirements of the Debian policy, of the Debian archive > administrators, and the common practice. > > In the case of the (L)GPL, it is common practice to use the license notices as > found in headers of files as if they were the actual license text. First > because the Policy §12.5 specifies that the copyright file should point at > /usr/share/common-licenses instead of quoting these licenses, and second > because the Archive administrators require us to include these headers > (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00023.html) > I am arguing that the "common practise" is incorrect. The first reason does not hold: pointing to a license file is different to including a "license notice" because a "license notice" is NOT a *license*, it often contains extra information (like authors and which software). The second reason also does not hold: That email you quoted is about the copyright file as a whole, whereas I am only arguing against the License: stanza. Of course the file as a whole must contain information equivalent to a "license notice". But the License: stanza must not, as I argued before. > I believe this is quite well summarised in the DEP iself, but your suggestions for > improvement are most welcome. See http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/#license-files-field > > Because the license notices differ between GPL-n and GPL-n+, I think that it is > consistent to not accept to factorise them with the same stand-alone license > paragraph. > I am arguing that this is inconsistent. GPL-2+ is equivalent to (GPL-2 or GPL-3 or ...) but for other similar cases, such as (MPL or GPL), DEP5 currently forces me to split them into separate License: paragraphs. To be consistent, you must pick one of these two: - License: paragraphs can't be split - they specify the entire terms for a given set of files. "MPL or LGPL or GPL" is separate license from "LGPL or GPL" and they each need separate License: paragraphs - License: paragraphs can be split into common components, and "relicensing" comments be pushed back into the File: paragraph, and disallowed to be in the License: paragraph. This forbids many many "license notices" which often contain such information. I also think that "license notices" should just be barred outright from License: paragraphs since they also often contain authorship/software information, which could conflict with other File: paragraphs that want to use the same License. Allowing conflict-less cases but barring conflicting cases would just be untidy. > In the case of the BSD-family licenses, my feeling is that indeed, they all > differ as soon as the wording changes, in particular when the persons or > institutions whose name “must not be used to endorse usage…” differ. This said > I think that in most countries, this clause is redundant with laws protecting > the usage of other's names, which makes the BSD variants discussed here > practically equivalent. Accordingly, SPDX.org is collating them under the same > short name. > > The case of the MPL, and the other long licenses with variable notices or > exhibit (or however they are called), is more difficult as one would have to > include the exhibit in the Files paragraph and the full, invarable text in the > stand-alone License paragraph. While the DEP does not disallow to do that, it > opens difficult questions on how to represent the information. In the case of > the MPL, a workaround could be to include its full text in > /usr/share/common-licenses. > > This said, I expect that the first uses cases of machine-reading DEP-5 > copyright files will focus on the license short names. For the rest, I think > that we would benefit of first observing if there is convergence in people's > practice. The parsers used to edit, validate or display the copyright files > will for sure be influential on this convergence. In that context, I think > that suggestions like license exception paragraph are more relevant for a 1.1 > revision. If needed I would agree to modify the DEP to not disallow them. For > instance: “Parsers may recognise extra types paragraphs, but this is not > required to comply to this specification”. > > Have a nice day, > -- GPG: 4096R/5FBBDBCE https://github.com/infinity0 https://bitbucket.org/infinity0 https://launchpad.net/~infinity0
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