FS/OSS license: not quite enough of a requirement

[Rahul Sundaram]

Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> In our packaging guidelines
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-76294f12c6b481792eb001ba9763d95e2792e825
> we state:
> 
>   The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community
>   to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively
>   from open source software.  In accordance with that, all packages
>   included in Fedora must be covered under an open source license.
> 
>   We clarify an open source license in three ways:
>   [...]
> 
> Drawing a line on licensing requirements is good, but I've recently
> realized (see below) that this is not quite enough to ensure that
> Fedora users aren't misled into loss of freedom by the Fedora project
> itself.
> 
> Consider a Free Software package licensed under a permissive license,
> such as the MIT license.
> 
> Consider that someone makes changes to the program and releases the
> whole under the same license, but refrains from publishing the
> corresponding sources.
> 
> Is this modified package eligible for inclusion in Fedora?
> 
> It certainly is under a Free Software license, but it certainly isn't
> Free Software any more.
> 
> 
> This is not a theoretical situation.  For the past month, I've been
> working on code that was mostly Free Software, but whose integrator
> had refrained from publishing corresponding sources of included Free
> Software packages, even the LGPLed ones.  Not the only kind of license
> infringement in that package, mind you.
> 
> They even licensed their *own* code under the LGPL, but they didn't
> publish the corresponding source code either (which AFAIK is not a
> license violation AFAIK, but IANAL)
> 
> A few more details at http://www.fsfla.org/?q=en/node/157
> An upcoming article will cover it in far more detail.
> 
> 
> Anyhow, the point is that it's not enough for there to be an
> applicable license that is a Free Software license (or "open source
> license", per the definition in the Fedora packaging guidelines).
> 
> It would be better to state that the software, as distributed by the
> Fedora project, must abide by the Free Software definition and (or?)
> the Open-Source Software definition.
> 
> Perhaps it would make sense to also add a note explaining that Fedora
> is committed to not distributing [non-firmware] software in such a way
> that the software wouldn't abide by these definitions, from the point
> of view of the recipients.  E.g. software licensed under a Free
> Software license but without corresponding sources.  If the reader
> finds deviations s/he should report them.
> 
> 
> Makes sense?

Doesn't 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-c23c2cd3782be842dc7ab40c35199c07cfbfe347 
already cover all that?

Rahul