On Sat, Aug 04, 2007, Adam Borowski wrote: > What about providing a way to programmatically cathegorize licenses, > something that would work for licenses other than different versions of GPL. > > I mean: > * BSD4 (or "BSD4-like") for stuff with the advertising clause > * BSD-like (as you used yourself in the 2nd example) for MIT, old X11, etc > * rename-clause (where modified versions need a different name) > * ... > > Just putting random acronyms in the license field won't make it usable for > anything more than distinguishing between GPLv2 and GPLv3; there are too > many licenses for an exhaustive list. What I'm suggesting is to define an > authoritative list of license types, and to have that list small. Something > just to tell the difference between no-problems-no-copyleft, > no-copyleft-but-with-issues, copyleft-but-GPL-compatible, > copyleft-but-not-GPL-compatible and the GPLs. The latter would get > cathegories on their own because of the GPL's prominence.
All this information (GPL-compatibility, having issues etc.) is external and should IMHO stay external. Otherwise if and when a GPLv4 is out, we'll need to change all the debian/copyright files to say whether their license is GPLv4-compatible or not. Also the DFSGs can change. I prefer to have license interpretation completely outside debian/copyright. Cheers, -- Sam. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
