[arch-dev-public] Updating the licenses package

Aaron Griffin aaronmgriffin at gmail.com
Fri Mar 30 12:44:14 EDT 2007


On 3/30/07, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Jason Chu <jason at archlinux.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:20:53 +0300
> > "Roman Kyrylych" <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > 2007/3/30, Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com>:
> > > > 2007/3/30, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:
> > > > > Hey all,
> > > > > I actually just came across this page here:
> > > > > http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
> > > > >
> > > > > I think we should go through and add some more common ones to the
> > > > > licenses packages (it's text, it'll compress well).  This comes up
> > > > > because we probably need an update for the Python license anyway.
> > > > >
> > > > > Maybe we can even add all of them?  Only problem is they don't
> > > > > seem to export plain text, so we can't really automate it... ewww.
> > > >
> > > > There's no need to add them all, IMO. Many of them are not used in
> > > > any of available PKGBUILDs, and some require providing full text
> > > > (BSD-like, MIT, zlib/libpng), but some most common of them could be
> > > > added.
> > > > It's importand to have correct licenses in package. See
> > > > http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/5637 for example.
> > > > Also, while changing the package, take a look at
> > > > http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/5623
> > >
> > > Oh, and yet one notice: why all directories in /usr/share/licenses are
> > > capitalized (i.e. RUBY, APACHE)???
> >
> > It all started with the GPL.  There was GPL, BSD, ... APACHE should
> > have been APL (I thought that's how I did it originally...).
> >
> > Almost all of the licenses have a shortened form.
> >
> > What do you suggest?
>
> I feel like people understand GPL, LGPL, BSD just fine. But I would
> have no idea what APL was until you told me, that just isn't a common
> way to refer to it. The question is- what do people put in the license
> field when it is an Apache license? We should have consistancy there-
> a license name should be identical to the license reference.

We also, currently, have the option to change whatever we want.  Right
now nothing enforces license handling, but in the future, pacman will.
 This means we should standardize this *before* we add that feature.

I'm a big fan of all lowercase names, but dunno if that'd work for
"gpl"... still.
Re: apache license:
   /usr/share/licenses/apl <-- real license
   /usr/share/licenses/apache <-- symlink to apl

- Aaron




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