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Re: DEP5: License section



On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 01:19:38AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
Le Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 04:01:51PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit :
On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 09:36:21PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
>    some parts (year, copyright, organization) are substituted with
>    placeholders. This can not work with DEP5, because of its
>    standalone license sections.

If I understand correctly, that simply means that SPDX offers a more compact representation of something that in DEP-5 will be more verbose, is that it? If yes, it's not a big deal and can be changed later on, without affecting backward compatibility.

In DEP-5, if there are two files with their license derived from the BSD license by changing the year, copryight and organisation name, we need to use a different short name for each, otherwise there is the possibility to infringe or at least mess with one of the licenses, by displaying the wrong organisation name in the non-endorsement clause. I do not know how SPDX solves the problem. But I note that they are inconsistent with the BSD-2-Clauses, that has no placeholders, so they may probably change one or the other at some point.

Somewhat related: Do the following violate Debian Policy (because is it not "verbatim")?:

License: other-GAP
 This file is free software; the Free Software Foundation gives
 unlimited permission to copy and/or distribute it, with or without
 modifications, as long as this notice is preserved.
 .
 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law; without even the
 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
 PURPOSE.
Comment:
 Some files may differ from above by replacing "this file" with more
 specific term.

Above is a _very_ common pattern - e.g. Makefile.in files commonly contains the alternate string "This Makefile.in is free software".

Strictly speaking this is not a DEP5 question but one suitable for debian-legal, but I dare sneak it in here anyway, as I believe it touches same kind of issue as the SPDX one raised above.



>  - SPDX's MIT license is from:
>    http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html.

I don't get this difference, can you please expand?

DEP-5 notes that several variants of the MIT license exist. I simply indicated which is the one chosen by SPDX.

It would also be helpful to include both Expat and MIT licenses (if not the cases already), since copyright-check currently describes Expat licenses as "MIT-like" (or some similar wording).


 - Jonas

--
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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