On 29/05/18 18:27, Giancarlo Razzolini via arch-general wrote:
Well, I never thought about licensing PKGBUILD's. Honestly, I don't think we need a license.
As a data point, Debian packaging files contain a debian/copyright [1] file which allows the package maintainer to specify a license for the packaging files (debian/*). (Generally things under debian/* are, or perhaps default to, GPL 2 as per the template.) As things are, contributors/maintainers have to license the use of their work in some way otherwise packages couldn't be built from the packaging files; packaging files are still "IP" therefore probably should be licensed. The AUR in particular is interesting as there's nothing I can see that specifies that the user-submitted packaging files are available for "free" use and which prevents me from slapping a restrictive distribution license on them and trying to charge for their use/redistribution/whatever. (And e.g. what happens if the package is adopted to [community]? Could I say I wanted payment because Arch gained the benefit of my work?) (IANAL but I /am/ a pessimist) [1] https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/