[Fedora-legal-list] Guidelines clarification - including additional license texts
Hello,
Some upstreams don't make source code releases. Instead they just
provide access to source code repositories from where package
maintainers can make their own tarball and use them to build
SRPMs. Often these repositories don't contain anything except the
minimal set of source files and build scripts, without any license
files or documentation of any kind. This is especially true in Java
world, where users are expected to use binaries built by upstream
developers and not rebuild the software on their own.
The problem arises when the license under which the software is
redistributed requires a copy of the license to be shipped with any
copies or derivative works of the software. Upstream doesn't have to do
that because they are the copyright holders, but still the requirement
for Fedora maintainers remains. A copy of the license must be included
in RPMs in order for the package to be redistributable without
violating the license terms (sometimes only binary in RPM, in some
cases both SRPM and binary RPMs). Licenses that require including
their texts with all derivative works include some widely used licenses
like ASL 2.0, EPL, BSD and MIT.
Some package maintainers don't include separate copies of license
files because they believe this would be against the Licensing
Guidelines. I would ask you to clarify the Guidelines to explicitly
allow including separate license copies in cases that it is required,
like the case mentioned above.
Thank you,
Mikolaj Izdebski