A bunch of us are looking into various possible changes in how the information on Fedora good/bad licenses is maintained, reviewed, classified and represented. One aspect of this is the likely effective replacement of such wiki pages as https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main with a repository (such as https://pagure.io/fedora-legal/license-data). Among other things this has prompted a review of how licenses are currently categorized by Fedora. In particular, Fedora has separate lists of good and bad licenses for content https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_3 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_3 and for documentation https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_2 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_2
A question that has arisen is whether we actually need to treat documentation and content as separate categories. "Content" (and documentation, software, fonts, etc.) are not defined in that wiki page as far as I can tell. (FWIW the FPCA defines "Content" in a way that includes documentation: "any copyrightable material that is not Code, such as, without limitation, (i) non-functional data sets, (ii) documentation, (iii) wiki edits, (iv) music files, (v) graphic image files, (vi) help files, and (vii) other kinds of copyrightable material that the Fedora Council has classified as "content" rather than "code".") There is some overlap in the content and documentation license lists and the other lists as well -- for example, CC-BY is given as a good documentation license and a good content license.
I think the answer is "yes", because of this policy: "Note that content must be freely distributable without restriction for inclusion in Fedora, and that a written statement from the content owner granting this is considered an approved license for Fedora. The one exception is that we permit content (but only content) which restricts modification as long as that is the only restriction." And indeed the content license lists includes a few non-libre licenses including at least one well known one that does not permit derivative works -- CC BY-ND.
I'm assuming that Fedora would not allow documentation under a non-libre license, if only because there isn't a similar caveat in the documentation license section and all the good documentation licenses appear to be assumed to be libre. I think there may be some arguable counterexamples that might be explained away as covering things that are non-documentation content as opposed to documentation. I also am pretty sure that Fedora has not attempted to officially list all the approved non-libre licenses for "content" but I'm not sure if this is something intentional. (The categorical example that comes to mind is the inclusion of certain kinds of files from standards documents, such as schemas and the like.)
Separately, I wonder if Fedora really needs separate categories for software and documentation, if the criteria for approval are basically the same -- essentially, whether the license is libre (by Fedora's own assessment) -- except that documentation licenses are seen as normally unsuitable for software. It is clear (to me at least) that any good Fedora software license should be good for documentation as well, if only because in practice documentation in packages is often covered by the software license -- indeed, this is probably much more common than cases where a special documentation license is used.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts or comments on this.
Richard
Dne 06. 12. 21 v 22:50 Richard Fontana napsal(a):
A bunch of us are looking into various possible changes in how the information on Fedora good/bad licenses is maintained, reviewed, classified and represented. One aspect of this is the likely effective replacement of such wiki pages as https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main with a repository (such as https://pagure.io/fedora-legal/license-data). Among other things this has prompted a review of how licenses are currently categorized by Fedora. In particular, Fedora has separate lists of good and bad licenses for content https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_3 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_3 and for documentation https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_2 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_2
A question that has arisen is whether we actually need to treat documentation and content as separate categories. "Content" (and documentation, software, fonts, etc.) are not defined in that wiki
I will cast my opinion.
No. We do not need to separate it. But on the other hand, it helps human identify for which it is primary good for.
I am +1 for storing the list somewhere in machine readable format (easily readable, not on wiki). But at the same time I am -1 for removing the wiki as it provides extra space for documenting and explaining.
I want to point to new tool I have created license-validate. See the thread on devel mailing list
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/...
Right now it contains manualy synced list of approved licenses copied from the wiki
https://pagure.io/copr/license-validate/blob/main/f/fedora-approved-licenses...
And BNF grammar of allowed constructs.
Miroslav
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 05:01:47PM +0100, Miroslav Suchý wrote:
I am +1 for storing the list somewhere in machine readable format (easily readable, not on wiki). But at the same time I am -1 for removing the wiki as it provides extra space for documenting and explaining.
The plan right now is to have the list in machine-readable form, and generate a human-readable document for docs.fedoraproject.org which contains a table plus explanatory text. That way, there aren't two lists to keep in sync.
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 11:02 AM Miroslav Suchý msuchy@redhat.com wrote:
I want to point to new tool I have created license-validate. See the thread on devel mailing list
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/...
Right now it contains manualy synced list of approved licenses copied from the wiki
https://pagure.io/copr/license-validate/blob/main/f/fedora-approved-licenses...
And BNF grammar of allowed constructs.
This sounds like it might be similar to some of what David Cantrell's rpm-inspect does (https://github.com/rpminspect/rpminspect).
Richard
On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 11:28:57AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 11:02 AM Miroslav Suchý msuchy@redhat.com wrote:
I want to point to new tool I have created license-validate. See the thread on devel mailing list
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/...
Right now it contains manualy synced list of approved licenses copied from the wiki
https://pagure.io/copr/license-validate/blob/main/f/fedora-approved-licenses...
And BNF grammar of allowed constructs.
This sounds like it might be similar to some of what David Cantrell's rpm-inspect does (https://github.com/rpminspect/rpminspect).
Yes, it looks like this is doing the same as "rpminspect -T license"
But the problem still remains regarding the source of the approved licenses. Miroslav's tool is reading the wiki for the data. I went the other route and used the JSON file constructed at RH and then put it in the rpminspect-data-fedora package requiring newly approved licenses to also be added to this file:
https://github.com/rpminspect/rpminspect-data-fedora/blob/master/licenses/fe...
If anything, we are seeing that the need for a central collection of the license data in machine-readable format is needed. :)
On 12/6/21 2:50 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
A bunch of us are looking into various possible changes in how the information on Fedora good/bad licenses is maintained, reviewed, classified and represented. One aspect of this is the likely effective replacement of such wiki pages as https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main with a repository (such as https://pagure.io/fedora-legal/license-data). Among other things this has prompted a review of how licenses are currently categorized by Fedora. In particular, Fedora has separate lists of good and bad licenses for content https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_3 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_3 and for documentation https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_2 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_2
A question that has arisen is whether we actually need to treat documentation and content as separate categories. "Content" (and documentation, software, fonts, etc.) are not defined in that wiki page as far as I can tell. (FWIW the FPCA defines "Content" in a way that includes documentation: "any copyrightable material that is not Code, such as, without limitation, (i) non-functional data sets, (ii) documentation, (iii) wiki edits, (iv) music files, (v) graphic image files, (vi) help files, and (vii) other kinds of copyrightable material that the Fedora Council has classified as "content" rather than "code".") There is some overlap in the content and documentation license lists and the other lists as well -- for example, CC-BY is given as a good documentation license and a good content license.
I think the answer is "yes", because of this policy: "Note that content must be freely distributable without restriction for inclusion in Fedora, and that a written statement from the content owner granting this is considered an approved license for Fedora. The one exception is that we permit content (but only content) which restricts modification as long as that is the only restriction." And indeed the content license lists includes a few non-libre licenses including at least one well known one that does not permit derivative works -- CC BY-ND.
Agreed, we should maintain the "content" and "documentation" approved licenses distinction and then document the difference and rationale explicitly, which I believe you may already be working on :)
I'm assuming that Fedora would not allow documentation under a non-libre license, if only because there isn't a similar caveat in the documentation license section and all the good documentation licenses appear to be assumed to be libre. I think there may be some arguable counterexamples that might be explained away as covering things that are non-documentation content as opposed to documentation. I also am pretty sure that Fedora has not attempted to officially list all the approved non-libre licenses for "content" but I'm not sure if this is something intentional. (The categorical example that comes to mind is the inclusion of certain kinds of files from standards documents, such as schemas and the like.)
Separately, I wonder if Fedora really needs separate categories for software and documentation, if the criteria for approval are basically the same -- essentially, whether the license is libre (by Fedora's own assessment) -- except that documentation licenses are seen as normally unsuitable for software. It is clear (to me at least) that any good Fedora software license should be good for documentation as well, if only because in practice documentation in packages is often covered by the software license -- indeed, this is probably much more common than cases where a special documentation license is used.
Interesting question here... perhaps for the time being we keep the distinction, if nothing else than the ease of human minds tendency to think about software and documentation as being different. Again, the rationale and explanation should be explicit in the legal/licensing pages. (seems like some of this email will be a helpful start for said explanations!) I suspect if, later on, we decided to collapse the documentation category into the greater software category, that would be pretty easy (as we'll have created the full data base by then)
Jilayne
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts or comments on this.
Those are my two cents!
Jilayne
On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 3:53 PM Jilayne Lovejoy jlovejoy@redhat.com wrote:
Separately, I wonder if Fedora really needs separate categories for software and documentation, if the criteria for approval are basically the same -- essentially, whether the license is libre (by Fedora's own assessment) -- except that documentation licenses are seen as normally unsuitable for software. It is clear (to me at least) that any good Fedora software license should be good for documentation as well, if only because in practice documentation in packages is often covered by the software license -- indeed, this is probably much more common than cases where a special documentation license is used.
Interesting question here... perhaps for the time being we keep the distinction, if nothing else than the ease of human minds tendency to think about software and documentation as being different. Again, the rationale and explanation should be explicit in the legal/licensing pages. (seems like some of this email will be a helpful start for said explanations!)
I agree, should keep the distinction for now. I am a little worried that there is some assumed line between "non-documentation content" and "documentation" that has been formulated out of convenience (e.g., if some file is under a no-derivatives type of license, Fedora has struggled to see that type of file as a "non-documentation content" file rather than a "documentation content" file. But that's just a hunch right now, and anyway could be better addressed with more clearly defined categories and guidance.
Richard
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David Cantrell -
Jilayne Lovejoy -
Matthew Miller -
Miroslav Suchý -
Richard Fontana