Licensing Guidelines Update - Please Read

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 07/08/2010 03:07 AM, Till Maas wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 07, 2010 at 04:29:01PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> 
>>   However, if a subpackage is independent of any base package (it does
>>   not require it, either implicitly or explicitly), it must include
>>   copies of any license texts (as present in the source) which are
>>   applicable to the files contained within the subpackage.
> 
> What about debuginfo packages? They do not require the base package but
> usually also do not include the license texts.

A great question. Debuginfo packages are "special".

IMHO, there are multiple ways that we could improve debuginfo packages,
specifically:
 - Generating debuginfo packages that match up to subpackages as
   opposed to being "catch-all" super packages.
 - Having subpackage specific debuginfo packages depend upon the files
   for which they provide debuginfo (or simply dependent on the
   subpackage that they match up to)
If those items came to pass, then we would not have licensing concerns
with debuginfo packages. (Adding Roland to the explicit CC here, because
this hadn't really occurred to me before, but would be another great
reason to make these changes.)

However, because of how the debuginfo packages are generated (in the
common case at least), maintainers do not need to worry about adding
license texts to them at this time, as that would add significant
complexity.

~spot