[csw-maintainers] Licence file handling proposal

[William Bonnet]

Hi

Tonight i talk about licenses with Trygve, and a need for a shared 
folder is here.  After gathering our ideas, here is a first proposal for 
discussion.

1/ Creation of a "License package".

This package will contains a list of files, each file is a licence text. 
In both full version, and short version (for pkgadd). Like the 
ca-certificate package, it is a reference datapackage that will be 
updated upon need. The files are stored under /opt/csw/share/licences. 
So as an example we will have the following layout :

|-- opt
   `-- csw
       `-- share
           `-- licences
               |-- Apache_License_2.0_full_text.txt
               |-- Apache_License_2.0_desc.txt
               |-- GPL_2.0_full_text.txt
               |-- GPL_2.0_desc.txt
               |-- GPL_3.0_full_text.txt
               `-- GPL_3.0_desc.txt

2/ Use reference to theses files from installed packages (when 
applicable), and create and entry under /opt/csw/share/licences for each 
package

For instance package foo which is released under GPL v2 will create the 
following entry

|-- opt
   `-- csw
       `-- share
           `-- licences
              `-- foo
                  `-- GPL_V2.0.txt -> 
/opt/csw/share/licenses/GPL_2.0_full_text.txt

I think it is better to use the license name instead of license.txt for 
the symlink. So the user know immediately which license it is.

Most of software are released under a single license, but for some 
packages it will be possible to create several link under the 
/opt/csw/share/license/<package> directory. If need a small readme.txt 
can explain that the software is released under several licenses.

3/ In the gspec file use a reference to  the short  "descriptive 
version" of the license.

Doing this  will reduce the output /garbage/ when installing a list of 
software under gpl.

We do have a constraint to distribute the license with the package. If 
linking it to a license text is not enough  (which is my guess). This 
will still be done as actually. Just keep the license.txt where they are 
actually, and for convenience use the symlinks and the short description.

The short description can be like this :

This software is distributed under the GNU General Public Licence V2 as published
by the Free Software Foundation.  See the file /opt/csw/share/licences/foo/GPL_V2.0.txt
for the conditions under which this software is made available. 

What about this ? 

Cheers

-- 

William                  http://www.wbonnet.net

http://www.sunwizard.net Le site français des amateurs de stations Unix
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