[darcs-users] darcs patch: relicenseDarcs.Commands.GZCRCsas BSD3

[Trent W. Buck]

"Sittampalam, Ganesh" <ganesh.sittampalam at credit-suisse.com> writes:

> Trent W. Buck wrote:
>> "Sittampalam, Ganesh" <ganesh.sittampalam at credit-suisse.com> writes:
>>> which is the main thing that the license exceptions file is trying to
>>> document.
>>
>> Well, currently it documents what license(s) each contributor is
>> prepared to use.  Anyone who then wants to use a module from Darcs'
>> codebase then has to work out which contributors worked on which
>> files.
>>
>> It'd be nice if we could also start listing any files where we CAN
>> declare a particular license, because all contributors to the file to
>> date have agreed to a particular license.
>
> I would say that the right place to list this information is in the
> file itself, because then any new contributions to that file
> implicitly follow that licence.

Fair enough.  A lot of our files currently appear to claim they're
GPL-any (with no openssl exception), so I guess the best way to fix what
I'm talking about is to change those declarations where appropriate.

>>> As far as Debian is concerned, just assuming GPL for the entire
>>> codebase is fine (because all the licensing we do have is
>>> GPL-compatible).
>>
>> This is not strictly true.  I am required by policy to document the
>> license of all work within the upstream tarball.  Even if "they can
>> be treated like they are GPLd", this is not relevant.
>
> All I can see in policy is the statement "Every package must be
> accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright and distribution
> license in the file /usr/share/doc/package/copyright"
> (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-pkgcopyright
> and
> http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s-copyrightfile).
> Is there some other statement that's stricter? I think the
> distribution licence for darcs is GPL.

Hm.  Maybe working next to a debian-legal weenie is having an osmotic
effect on me...