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#1 2006-10-19 02:24:15

elasticdog
Member
From: Washington, USA
Registered: 2005-05-02
Posts: 995
Website

Should the zlib license really be in licenses/common?

I'm trying to update all of my AUR PKGBUILDs with the proper license field and ran across one that uses the zlib/libpng license.  The ZLIB license is currently included in the default licenses package and has a version located here: <code>/usr/share/licenses/common/ZLIB/licenses.txt</code>, but much like the BSD/MIT licenses, the zlib license should have a unique copyright line.

As per the instructions listed on the Arch Packaging Standards page, it would seem like it should need a custom license.  Is that right?  If so, shouldn't the zlib one be removed from the common licenses package?  For reference, this is what the license looks like:

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright>

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

    1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.

    2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.

    3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

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#2 2006-10-19 07:36:55

Romashka
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Should the zlib license really be in licenses/common?

I don't see where's the problem. Can you explain which term of the license, in your opinion, disallows the current practice of putting zlib license in common directory, instead of marking it 'custom' and distributing with each package?


to live is to die

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#3 2006-10-21 02:17:23

djscholl
Member
From: Michigan, USA
Registered: 2006-05-24
Posts: 56

Re: Should the zlib license really be in licenses/common?

I am not a lawyer, but I think I understand what elasticdog is talking about. To quote Arch_Packaging_Standards,

The MIT, BSD and Python licenses are special cases and cannot be included in the 'common' licenses pkg. For the sake of the license variable, it's treated like a common license (license="BSD", license="MIT" or license="Python") but for the sake of the filesystem, it's a custom license, because each one has its own copyright line. Each MIT, BSD or Python licensed package should have its unique license stored in /usr/share/licenses/$pkgname/.

The specific statement in question is the second line of /usr/share/licenses/common/ZLIB/license.txt:

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright>

Note that the second field actually says "copyright holders", not "copyright", but for reasons I don't understand, the forum doesn't display the space and the second word. The year and copyright holders fields are meant to be filled out by the copyright holders, and will be different for essentially every package using the ZLIB license. Since this statement is part of the license, the license is different every time it is used. As the wiki says, the MIT, BSD, and Python licenses also name the copyright holder in the license itself. This can be seen by inspecting them at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/.

The other licenses in /usr/share/licenses/common do not contain explicit copyright statements as part of the license, even though several of them contain instructions or templates for creating such statements in an addendum. Hence, these licenses are the same each time they are used.

I think elasticdog is correct. ZLIB should be removed from /usr/share/licenses/common, and treated as the MIT, BSD, and Python licenses are treated. Since it's common, it doesn't need to be marked as "custom"; it can be marked as license="ZLIB".

It seems best to update the licenses package and the wiki at the same time. Is a bug report the best way to accomplish this?

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#4 2006-10-21 03:28:43

Snowman
Developer/Forum Fellow
From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

Re: Should the zlib license really be in licenses/common?

Submit a bug report. The devs will make the decision on how to treat it.

I'm the one who initially ask several months ago for that licence to be included in the license package.  :oops:  It seems that myself and the dev who did the change haven't noticed that it was like the BSD, MIT licences.

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#5 2006-10-21 04:08:31

elasticdog
Member
From: Washington, USA
Registered: 2005-05-02
Posts: 995
Website

Re: Should the zlib license really be in licenses/common?

Whew...well said djscholl, precisily what I was meaning!  Bug report filed here: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/5637

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