Hi Gert, Quoting Gert Wollny (2015-11-21 12:19:50) > Specifically, there are various source files that are all licensed > with a BSD-3-clause license which are worded slightly differently.
a) When license is _worded_ different from another, it is another (more or less general) license - even though arguably the licensing _terms_ are same. a1) When licensing terms mandate it, then the varying part (even if not really license but e.g. a disclaimer) must be included verbatim. a2) When licensing terms do not mandate inclusion, you might consider skipping it (but think hard before _rewriting_ as that may be seen as worse manipulation than omission). An extreme example of this is the GNU GAP license used for some (but not all!) autotools files, which arguably permit not including the licensing terms at all (but read the actual terms, don't blindly trust it to always be true!). b) When license is _formatted_ differently - be it indentation, hyphenation or numbering markers - then (arguably, and how I interpret it) you may treat as same license. c) When license is only inferred by reference - e.g. as is common for GPL and Artistic licenses - then you must include verbatim the _license_ (or refer to it, for licenses in /usr/share/common-licenses). Whether or not the license grant (the statement referring to actual license) must also be included was discussed recently at <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/05/msg00473.html>, related is also <https://bugs.debian.org/786450>. > Now my question is how to deal with this? On one hand from their > spirit these are all BSD-3-clause licenses (and licensecheck reports > exactly this), on the other hand, I can not unify these texts with the > generic version, since this would mean to not properly document the > wording of some licenses in the d/copyright file. licensecheck is a sloppy tool to identify _types_ of licenses - e.g. to help identify incompatibilities. debian/copyright (especially when written machine-readable) may help checking types of licenses, but also serves to address licensing requirements of verbatim included author statements. > Should I set short names to BSD-3-clause+<somename>? While this would > quell the lintian warning, I'm reluctant to invent new short names for > licenses that are simply a BSD-3-clause licenses in their meaning. What I do is that - but I use ~ as delimiter for such cases of "almost the general license text". - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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