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On Sunday, August 26, 2018 7:09:41 AM EDT Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote: |
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> On 26/08/2018 12:53, Mart Raudsepp wrote: |
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> > The common issue here is that upstream COPYING files really do only |
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> > talk about one of the versions. And then you get to validate or source |
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> > files to be sure that they do have a "or later" clause in them. And |
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> > then on each bump you ideally should validate it again, etc, that no |
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> > sources without "or later" allowance are in there... |
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> |
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> Yup, precise tracking of license metadata can be a pain. |
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> |
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> I'm not really sure if that level of it is worth for us as a distro. For |
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> _importing_ other project's source code directly into one's project |
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> precise license compatibility matters a lot. That's not the scenario |
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> we're in. I see LICENSES as mostly a mechanism for end users to accept |
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> or reject EULAs etc, and I'm curious what are other common scenarios. |
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> |
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> Michał, could you elaborate on why not distinguishing more precisely |
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> between these GPL variants in LICENSES is a _problem_ ? I can certainly |
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> see the information is not always accurate, but it's not obvious to me |
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> how severe is the downside, what are the consequences in practice. |
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I can say that if the licenses are habitually misidentified, I could not use |
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Gentoo's portage tree in my job without extensive and ongoing revalidation of |
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the license metadata. |
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There are, in fact, automated tools for advising about the license disposition |
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of these types of things, examining source files for unfortunate edits and |
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variants and flagging them, etc. It might be an interesting task at some point |
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to point some of these tools at portage, look for incorrect metadata and file |
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bug reports. |
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Not suggesting this is a worthwhile approach up front, but it might be a |
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useful tool in the future for dealing with license metadata quality as a |
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chronic issue. (Which, in turn, is useful for commercial consumption and |
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participation.) |