Re: Jam: which licence is this?

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

Hi Leo,

I took the liberty of adding a bit more context to your quotation of me
below, since I've added Ludovic to the CC list.

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> writes:

> On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 04:37:42PM -0400, Mark H Weaver wrote:
>> It's true that Guix has a
>> longstanding practice of omitting more lax licenses when there's also a
>> more restrictive license covering the same package.  I should have
>> mentioned that.
>>
>> However, I think that longstanding practice is orthogonal to the
>> question of whether licenses covering build system components can be
>> omitted from the 'license' field.
> [...]
>> Specifically, I'm objecting to the idea that the 'license' field need
>> only describe the files present in the build outputs.  For example, if a
>> hypothetical package is licensed under Expat but uses a build system
>> covered by the the Q Public License (QPL), I don't think we can omit
>> mention of the QPL just because those components are only used during
>> the build.
>> 
>> Does that make sense?
>
> I think I understand what you are suggesting.
>
> However, there is no precedent in Guix for mentioning the licenses of
> build system components in package definitions.

I think you're mistaken, or at least this would be news to me.

My understanding is that the 'license' field of a package in Guix has
_always_ been meant to summarize the license restrictions associated
with the package source (the output of "guix build --source"), and
*not* merely the package outputs.

> I'd guess that almost every single package in Guix would need several
> new licenses added to its field,

Really?  Can you give some examples of this from our core packages?

> and that field would become useless for conveying the license of the
> program itself.

For most purposes, the relevant question is: which license(s) cover the
source code, because that's where users will want to exercise the four
freedoms of free software.  The license(s) that cover the package
outputs are of far less interest, because that's not where users will
exercise the four freedoms.

The 'license' field can only mean one of these two things, and I think
it's fairly clear which one it should be.  Moreover, I think that this
is what it has always meant in Guix.  If not, that's a problem.

Perhaps Ludovic would like to clarify?

      Thanks,
        Mark

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