[csw-maintainers] License / copyright files in packages

[James Lee]

On 05/11/10, 17:39:25, Maciej "(Matchek)" Blizinski <maciej at opencsw.org>
wrote regarding [csw-maintainers] License / copyright files in packages:

> I've just learned that our release manager is not aware of a policy
> requiring to put license files into /opt/csw/share/doc/foo/license.
> Currently, checkpkg requires that and if the file is not present,
> prints:

I'm also not aware it's a requirement.


> On the other hand, I learned about the "i copyright" file that is
> meant to contain the license file.

Can you clarify?  I too learned about the "i copyright" but it was
when I built my first package.


> Should we reconcile that and settle on one policy?

i copyright is the correct place.

The advantage of placing in the information section of the package is
the file is in a standard place and it gets put in the first part of
the package file so allowing it to be pullout more easily (without
reading/downloading the whole file) eg to present to the user before
installation which is important should the user not agree.  See
example here:
http://www.canoedissent.org.uk/packages/unstable/sparc/5.10/CSWfetchma
il/copyright/
I only download the head of each package to extract i files.


Excepting local file system differences, eg sharing /opt, there is no
advantage in storing the copyright in:
    /opt/csw/share/doc/foo/license
over:
    /var/sadm/pkg/CSWfoo/copyright

The advantage of storing in the standard location is it's standard,
not just CSW and should already be known to admins.




James.