[aur-dev] AUR 4 and licensing

[Loui Chang]

On Mon 13 Apr 2015 12:46 -0230, David Manouchehri wrote:
> > I like this idea, but I don't think it's sound to consider something
> > GPL-licensed because the author checked a box or accepted the TOC. I doubt
> > that has any legal significance.
> 
> I agree that accepting a one time ToS agreement is hardly binding. That's
> why I suggested printing out a message with a Git hook saying everything
> you push is going to be GPL, it's a bit harder to claim ignorance when you
> see that message every time.
> 
> We're already in the gray area since there's thousands of packages with no
> license explicitly listed, and I don't think it's sane to suggest removing
> those.
> 
> > Wouldn't it make more sense to use a mandatory two-line header like below?
> 
> This switch to Git is already going to cost us a lot of maintainers who
> simply don't feel like learning it, I can't say I'm in favor for imposing
> any more requirements.
> 
> I'm also not really a fan of littering my PKGBUILDs with static text
> either. Listing the current maintainer and contributors is already less
> than ideal (with the move to Git, I guess we could stop listing the
> contributors inline since they're in the logs).

I don't really like the idea of all this red-tape, requiring one license or
another. So I have some concerns. Is there a plan to enforce this? If the
PKGBUILD is trivial can you reasonably defend a license? If you want a license
why not allow the contributor to select one rather than choosing for them?

If I write a patch/etc is it under GPL or is it under the project's original
license?

So I'm thinking any license of the build scripts should be compatible with
the software it is packaging, or at least not impose any new restrictions.

Allow the contributor to select a 'do what you want' type 'license' which can
be used as a default if the package has a non recognisable license or multiple
licenses. Otherwise let the contributor specify the license.

Get rid of the TOS. I don't think the TUs want to become the license police.
Furthermore this is a topic that most likely should be discussed and decided
among TUs in a formal fashion.