[Fedora-legal-list] Proper license field for GPL aggregation

[Tom Callaway]

On 03/16/2011 01:13 PM, Michel Alexandre Salim wrote:
> Thanks, Tom. Will revert the change at the next update. In this specific
> case, it does not really matter, but in cases where the package in
> question can be further linked with other programs, won't it be a bit
> misleading if the license is just, say, "MIT"?

No, because we clearly document that "The License: field refers to the
licenses of the contents of the binary rpm."
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/LicensingGuidelines#License:_field)

When you think about this, it might seem to make sense to incorporate
linking into a package's license tag, after all, your app "foo" links to
"libbar", and this seems obvious. But "libbar" links to "libbaz" and
"libfish" and "libcat" and "libdog" and "libtree", all of which move and
change independently, including new linking and license changes.
Suddenly, the license tag on "foo" is constantly in flux.

So, instead, we have packages track the licenses of the contents of the
binary rpm, and we use that data to determine cross package license
compatibility, separately from the per-package info.

Hope that helps,

~tom

==
Fedora Project