[Fedora-legal-list] Re: Exception needed for KDE GitLab CI scripts being licensed CC0-1.0
On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 2:03 PM Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 7:48 AM Neal Gompa <ngompa13(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey folks,
>
> So I was working through the review of flatpak-kcm[1], where I
> discovered that KDE GitLab CI scripts are currently licensed CC0-1.0.
>
> I'm in the process of making a request to KDE to consider relicensing
> all such code/scripts to MIT, but in the meantime, is it okay for us
> to have CC0-1.0 listed for this specific case?
This looks like it's a consequence of the upstream project attempting
to conform to the REUSE specification, which requires some form of
explicit SPDX-expression-based licensing of all files in a "Project",
which REUSE's tools seem to interpret as being equivalent to a
repository. That issue has come up already though I am not sure we
documented a resolution. Currently, REUSE recommends that highly
trivial files, files that might be reasonably assumed not to be
copyrightable and so forth, be explicitly placed under CC0. (This
continues to be one of my main gripes with REUSE, not just because CC0
is not allowed for code in Fedora but also because CC0 is not well
designed for many of the cases that I think REUSE is contemplating it
would be used for to conform to this recommendation, and also because
any application of a conventional license including CC0 gives
credibility to copyright-maximalist arguments. I'm currently pondering
an approach that would recommend use of a LicenseRef- designed for
these cases, as in some other respects REUSE has some appealing
features.)
One point about the Bugzilla: "CC0-1.0" does not need to be mentioned
in the license tag because it only covers files that are included in
the source RPM. Nevertheless, an exception is required because all
Fedora-packaged material must be under Fedora-allowed licenses or be
covered by an exception.
Anyway, I have previously thought that we should have a blanket
exception for uses of CC0 that result entirely from upstream attempts
to make repositories REUSE-conformant.
This would be highly appreciated! The discussion upstream isn't
exactly going to be easy, so a quick resolution for now would unblock
flatpak-kcm and other KDE software stuff.
--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!