CC0 has been listed by Fedora as a 'good' license for code
and content
(corresponding to allowed and allowed-content under the new system).
We plan to classify CC0 as allowed-content only, so that CC0 would no
longer be allowed for code. This is a fairly unusual change and may
have an impact on a nontrivial number of Fedora packages (that is not
clear to me right now), and we may grant a carveout for existing
packages that include CC0-covered code. While we are moving towards a
process in which license approvals are going to be done primarily
through the Fedora license data repository on
gitlab.com, I wanted to
note this on the mailing list because of the significance of the
change.
Hi!
I was made aware of this change just today.
Given that this is a "significant" change, would it be possible to announce this
more widely / publicly than the rather obscure "legal" mailing list?
We already have a not insignificant number of packages in Fedora that are licensed CC0.
For example, it's not really a "popular" license for Rust projects, but we
have 22 of them that are licensed CC0:
https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+r:src.fedoraproject.org+f...
Should we attempt to inform upstream projects that their code is, going forward, not going
to be considered "FOSS" unless they relicense? What will happen if a project
that we have in Fedora today grows a dependency on something that's still
CC0-licensed? Will that block us from updating that software until the affected project is
re-licensed? Who will convince projects that this is necessary? Where is publicly visible
announcement that they could be pointed to? (And no, a mailing list post doesn't
count.)
As it is, I consider this change a serious roadblock for getting up-to-date software
(including security fixes) to users.
Fabio