Licensing Guidelines Update - Please Read

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 07/08/2010 04:12 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:29:01 -0400, Tom 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.
> 
> With this we've reached the point once more where the default %doc dir is
> a poor choice, because it is based on the subpackage's %{name} instead of
> the src.rpm's or base package's %{name}.
> 
> For the common tools'n'library split of a package, the changed guidelines
> duplicate the license files by storing them in two different directories
> when using %doc:
> 
>   /usr/share/doc/name-1.0/COPYING
>   /usr/share/doc/name-libs-1.0/COPYING

Yes, I absolutely understand that. The intent is to minimize this by
leveraging dependencies (tools depends on libs). A common, system-wide
directory for license files to be dropped into is a recipe for disaster
(COPYING conflicts with COPYING).

http://rpm.org/ticket/116, if it were implemented as I've proposed,
attempts to address this by setting up a common license dir, then
comparing the license text payload against existant files in that
license dir, and if a match occurs (not just a filename match), the file
would become a hard link to the file in the common license dir.
If no match is found, the file is written into the docdir.

This allows for us to make a "common-licenses" package that is default
installed as part of Fedora and minimize license text duplication.

Although, as James Antill pointed out on that ticket, license text
duplication doesn't really account for too much disk space. They're
small to begin with.

There is actually a benefit to having the subpackage name be part of the
license location, in situations where the independent subpackage name
significantly differs from the basename of the source package, it is
easier for someone not versed in RPM to locate the applicable license
texts while traversing /usr/share/doc/ .

~spot