Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 15:06:55 +0200 From: Michael Nottebrock <michaelnottebrock@gmx.net> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Cc: Gary Kline <kline@tao.thought.org> Subject: Re: Drop of portindex Message-ID: <200409181507.09833.michaelnottebrock@gmx.net> In-Reply-To: <20040918054956.GA75809@misty.eyesbeyond.com> References: <20040915093120.3067472e@dolphin.local.net> <200409152056.38900.linimon@lonesome.com> <20040918054956.GA75809@misty.eyesbeyond.com>
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On Saturday 18 September 2004 07:49, Greg Lewis wrote:
> Since writers of RPM spec files face the same issues
> (keeping the tag in sync with the source and whether the tag is a
> guarantee of licensing or not) I simply wonder how they tackled them
> (if they did :).
SuSE for example packages kdemultimedia like this (excerpt from=20
kdemultimedia3.spec):
Name: kdemultimedia3
License: GPL
Group: System/GUI/KDE
Summary: KDE Multimedia Libraries
Version: 3.2.1
> Anyone know if this issue has come up in Gentoo?
No idea, but at the moment they deal with it even worse:
The kdemultimedia-3.3.0 ebuild gets the license evaluation from an eclass=20
definition that's common to most kde module ebuilds, kde-dist:
DESCRIPTION=3D"KDE ${PV} - "
HOMEPAGE=3D"http://www.kde.org/"
LICENSE=3D"GPL-2"
SLOT=3D"$KDEMAJORVER.$KDEMINORVER"
The catch is, this information is wrong. One of the central applications in=
=20
kdemultimedia, noatun, is BSD licensed. KDE in general contains programs an=
d=20
other material (such as icons, sounds) which come under a number of free=20
software licenses: GPL, BSD, Artistic, etc.
What people seem to continually miss is that licensing is a legal thing. As=
=20
such, it lacks the kind of standardisation and uniformity that would be=20
needed to implement a lean yet clean representation of licensing that fits=
=20
within a packaging system. Cataloguing licenses in a meaningful (that is,=20
factually correct) way needs constant manual review and as you can see by t=
he=20
example of SuSE, even not-so-small commercial players seem to lack the=20
necessary resources to do that. And, as has been brought up before, in the=
=20
legal world, incorrect or vague information is worse than no information al=
l.
=2D-=20
,_, | Michael Nottebrock | lofi@freebsd.org
(/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve | http://www.freebsd.org
\u/ | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org
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