[csw-maintainers] License and copyright notice

[Philip Brown]

On Tue, Feb 03, 2009 at 02:12:50PM +0100, William Bonnet wrote:
> I was thinking of adding to GAR something like :
> 
> LICENSE_CSWlibx11 = GPL2
> 
> Which would add the copyright (to gspec file) as you wrote and also the 
> full license text file to the package, for instance to 
> /opt/csw/share/license/GARNAME/LICENSE_NAME (GPL2.txt in this case) .
> 
> That would remove the copyright from gspec (since it would be 
> generated), and would take us one step closer to a fully generated gspec 
> file.

Hmmm...

I'm not sure i FULLY understand what you are writing about, but it sort of
sounds to me like you are saying:

 -  keep a collection of "standard" licenses in gar somewhere
 - have an optional GAR feature, that says,
     "This package uses license 'X', which we have a copy of. pull
       it from our "standard location" in gar and put it in the file.


This strikes me as very dangerous. it will eventually need to packages
shipping with a wrong (old/obsolete) version of a license when a maintainer
doesnt notice it has changed.

I think it is important to copy the license file from the 
(upstream)src distribution, directly into the package, every time.