Duplicated files in the pristine FC4t2 installation

[Terje Bless]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Mike A. Harris <mharris at redhat.com> wrote:

>I think it is 100% wrong to mark files as duplicates because they are
>the same "now".  There is no guarantee they will be the same in a future
>update.  Excluding a GPL license COPYING file from one package and
>linking it to another central copy fails the second someone decides to
>use GPLv3 for that package.

So make virtual provides for each license in the licenses.rpm and depend on
that.

Not caring much for the mentioned 160MB on install (allthough the contribution
to number of install media might be relevant), but looking at it from askew;
the license is _metadata_ and belongs in the metadata section of the rpm --
i.e. License plus a Requires -- with a pointer to the real license file.

cf. Creative Commons; you don't include the full license in every little web
page under a CC license, you point to the license in the metadata.

Among other things, this enables automated discovery and processing of license
information in addition to the marginal benefit of reducing disk space wasted.


Playing tricks with hardlink or softlinking seems pointless and silly to me.


>Or if they add text to the top of the file or something.

At which point the packager will have to take a look at it to determine what
to do -- which s/he would have to anyway when the license changed -- possibly
including removing the Requires and putting the COPYING file back in the
package.

- -- 
Interviewer: "In what language do you write your algorithms?"
    Abigail: English.
Interviewer: "What would you do if, say, Telnet didn't work?"
    Abigail: Look at the error message.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP SDK 3.2.2

iQA/AwUBQnegA6PyPrIkdfXsEQLx2QCffhq6InBzuBE2r5dBqUjQ8RNBEzsAoO9/
dKx9b5kggTDiFH5gWZB5OUUV
=la8q
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----