Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 08:28:33 -0400 From: Eitan Adler <eadler@freebsd.org> To: Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe@freebsd.org> Cc: Mathieu Arnold <mat@freebsd.org>, svn-ports-head@freebsd.org, svn-ports-all@freebsd.org, Emanuel Haupt <ehaupt@freebsd.org>, ports-committers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: svn commit: r345472 - in head/mail: mmr smtpfeed Message-ID: <CAF6rxgnimGJV282MKf%2ByuGjoWF-j40e%2BV5Xye5Fv3MB%2BSq-_bA@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20140311063746.GA40426@FreeBSD.org> References: <201402211451.s1LEpO30005480@svn.freebsd.org> <20140310141642.GA92282@FreeBSD.org> <724E420543C93474E8AD21FA@ogg.in.absolight.net> <CAF6rxg=CnfZPHuxY8A3tz94ZntnWdv9wKbxBzCU2aJCAFDjTQA@mail.gmail.com> <20140311063746.GA40426@FreeBSD.org>
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On 11 March 2014 02:37, Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe@freebsd.org> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 07:43:09PM -0400, Eitan Adler wrote: >> LICENSE= is largely useless for actual lawyers, > > Can you elaborate on this a bit, for those of us who didn't get their feet > wet in the legal pool? I am not a laywer and don't give legal advice. However, LEGAL can not be trusted as a source of licensing information. Not only are there too many mistakes made (more than 0) but even when the license is set 'correctly' small differences between licenses may require additional work. For example, BSD style licensees require attribution but who to attribute is not listed. > If some well-defined terms of some license can be > abbreviated as, say, GPLv2, why do we have to provide a full copy in every > individual port? I did not say that LICENSE_FILE must always be installed. If the license is byte-for-byte identical to the template, a symlink is fine. >> but setting LICENSE_FILE can be kind of helpful. > > Shouldn't "Kind of" sound too vague to actual lawyers? :) I have never gone through the process of license compliance. From chatting with others who have, I am told that setting LICENSE_FILE can help with a first pass or some of the basic automatic work. >> In addition setting LICENSE_FILE can help to find mistakes in LICENSE= >> more easily. > > It can help, but it can be done without it, just by grepping through the > source tree for certain signatures. True. This just allows more reliable automation. >> IMHO LICENSE_FILE should always be set. > > Gentoo portages only set LICENSE in their ebuilds, AFAIR. Why they can > get away without LICENSE_FILE, and we cannot? Not to mention that this > knob uglifies the Makefile. We can get away with it (as in fact, we do). I wonder if we should. In any case, the LICENSE system needs a lot more work and some design input for Real Lawyers. ;) -- Eitan Adler Source, Ports, Doc committer Bugmeister, Ports Security teams
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