* Charles Plessy [2010-08-15 00:20 +0900]: > Le Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 01:26:45PM +0200, Carsten Hey a écrit : > > > > Shouldn't it be mentioned in the licenses description that the expat > > license sometimes wrongly is referred to as MIT license? > > I wonder if the tradition of using the “Expat” name to refer unambiguously to > one of the variants of the “MIT” license is widespread or Debian-specific.
If I would need to make a guess I would guess: the FSF was first in doing so. > I think that the DEP should not fall in the trap of trying to make some > extensive license classification. We actually removed most of what made the > short name parseable during the off-line preparative work, and I will prehaps > go further and propose the removal of the description of the version > semantics, > that is for instance: GPL-2 and GPL-3 would be two separate short names, not > two version of the GPL short name. Ontologies and license metadata are > probably > better in the scope of another document. GPL, GPL-1, GPL-1+, GPL-2, GPL-2+, GPL-3, GPL-3+ ... that would be a lot of short names, even if GPL-1 and GPL-1+ could be merged and GPL could be removed. Besides GPL there are other licenses with different versions like LGPL and there is code that is licensed CDDL-1 although there is only one CDDL version currently. > If it provides ‘MIT’ as a keyword, and the full text of the MIT license in > annex, then it will be clear what ‘MIT’ means in the context of the DEP. > Interstinly, SPDX has not yet made up their minds about the MIT license: Your approach is interesting, but on the other hand I don't think we should encourage calling the Expat license MIT license by using MIT as keyword. If we just change the description everything should be clear without the need to use a search engine to find out what the "Expat License" is. FSF says: | Expat License | | This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, | compatible with the GNU GPL. It is sometimes ambiguously referred to | as the MIT License. Our description is just (or rather was 240 days ago): | Expat - The Expat License. > Now, for the BSD: > > ... > > If consensus converges on using a ‘similar to’ keyword, I will submit a patch. I see the problem you want so solve and I'm unsure if a such a keyword addition would finally make DEP-5 easier to use or more complicated. Anyone else? The FSF has also good (and non-free) descriptions of the various BSD Licenses: | FreeBSD license | | This is the original BSD license with the advertising clause and | another clause removed. (It is also sometimes called the “2-clause BSD | license”.) ... | Modified BSD license | | ... | | This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the | advertising clause. ... | | | This license is sometimes referred to as the 3-clause BSD license. > Have a nice sunday, Thanks, you too. You are always a bit ahead of the times ;) Carsten -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100814163926.ga15...@foghorn.stateful.de
