Licensing Guidelines Update - Please Read

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 07/07/2010 10:40 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> For instance, package A has a small A-plugins subpackage and a small
> A-fonts subpackage which carries only two fonts. Both the A-plugins
> and the A-fonts subpackages can be used by other software (independent
> of A), but the main A package needs these subpackages for its own
> functionality, hence the base package A requires these subpackages.
> Given that the subpackages carry the same license with the base
> package A, what package or packages should carry the license file?

The intention of this guideline is to ensure that under normal
circumstances (e.g without --nodeps or --force), an installed Fedora
system contains the applicable license texts (as provided by upstream)
for the binary RPM packages which are installed - in _all_ possible
combinations.

So, in your situation where the main package depends on the fonts and
plugins package, but the fonts and plugins package are independent, the
fonts and plugins packages need to contain copies of the appropriate
license texts (as provided by the source), but the main package does not
(the applicable license texts will be provided by the subpackage
dependencies). This gets slightly more complicated if the base package
contains files under additional licenses which the subpackage
dependencies do not, but in that situation, the base package would only
need to include the _additional_ license texts that apply to it and not
to the subpackage contents.

I hope that clarifies things a bit.

~spot