[Fedora-legal-list] License propagation in Maven pom.xml hierarchy

[Tom Callaway]

On 12/11/2012 10:11 AM, Stanislav Ochotnicky wrote:
> I would like guidance on propagation of licenses within Apache Maven pom.xml
> files. Short introduction:
> 
> Maven pom.xml files specify project build process and various metadata. They
> *can* contain licensing information embedded in a special <licenses> tag. We
> package relatively a lot of simple pom packages (i.e. there's only the xml file
> packaged + few fedora glue). Not all of these files are clearly licensed but
> they almost always have parent pom.xml files (specified in <parent> tag). 
> 
> What I believe makes sense is that if the pom.xml file doesn't specify license,
> we should assume the license is the same as parent pom. In any case the files
> are relatively simple so they might not be even copyrightable (but better safe
> than sorry). 
> 
> Can we get clearance for this or similar approach? Note that contacting
> upstreams with these requests have mostly been fruitful with new projects, but
> we have quite a few old things where they are long abandoned (but still used). 

I concur. If the pom.xml file does not specify license, it is safe to
assume the license is the same as the parent pom, except in the weird
case where the pom.xml comes from a separate upstream source as the
parent pom.

~tom

==
Fedora Project