[Fedora-packaging] Packaging of license file in case of extracted sources

[Paul Howarth]

Mattias Ellert wrote:
> mån 2009-04-20 klockan 11:22 +0200 skrev Ralf Corsepius:
>> This paragraph aims at the problem of tarballs containing
>> "inlined licenses" vs. packages containing "detached licenses".
>>
>> With
>> * "inlined licenses": source files contain a "license section" within 
>> their code.
>> * "detached licenses": A tarball contains one or more files, describing 
>> the source's contents.
>>
>>
>> Somewhat oversimplified, this guideline essentially means: "If the 
>> tarball has a license file, then you must include it - if it doesn't, 
>> you must not create one"
>>
>>
>> Ralf
> 
> The question at hand is not whether the tarball contains inlined or
> detached licenses. The question is which tarball the guideline refers
> to. If it is the large upstream installer it does include a detached
> license file. If it is the extracted tarball it does not.

The upstream distribution is the big installer containing the license 
file. The creation of the extracted tarballs is part of the packaging 
process.

Suppose the packager of a "standard" package with a detached license 
file in the upstream tarball made an extracted tarball containing 
everything but the upstream license file and then used that as the basis 
for a package. Would that make sense? No. Neither does the omission of 
the upstream license in the case of the humongous installer. The 
extracted tarball should include the upstream license and the 
subdirectory of interest from the installer, and then the resulting 
package should include the license file.

Paul.