[Fedora-legal-list] LICENSE file for spec files

[Richard Fontana]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 12:59:55PM +0200, Mikolaj Izdebski wrote:
> On 09/22/2015 11:46 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > Or you could say something like "Spec files adapted from the Fedora
> > Project. Licensed under the MIT license". 
> 
> Wouldn't that be violation of the license?  If I understand correctly,
> any distribution containing code licensed under MIT license must contain
> full copy of the license text, not just reference.

No (I am assuming the spec files in question here do not contain the
text of the MIT license, and that we have the usual case where there
is no explicit license covering the spec file). The applicability of
the MIT license is a consequence of the FPCA. Given that the MIT
license does say:

  ... subject to the following conditions:

  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
  included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

it's reasonable to ask what that means where there is no notice. The
FPCA addresses this:

  You consent to having Fedora provide reasonable notice of Your
  licensing of Your Contribution under the Current Default License
  ... in a manner determined by Fedora.

I consider the information in
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing#License_of_Fedora_SPEC_Files
(the wiki page is referenced in fedora-release's
Fedora-Legal-README.txt) to be "reasonable notice".  If a contributor
wants more than that the contributor can put a license notice in the
spec file.