Dave Love writes: > Indeed. Not only do you need to list the licences (according to all > "legal advice" I've seen for distributions), but normally also > distribute the relevant licence texts, even for permissive licences if > they require that (e.g. BSD). I raised this recently, as it's not > generally being done, so some Guix binary packages appear to be > copyright-infringing. > Yes, I think Debian has a /usr/share/doc/PKG/copyright file for each package PKG. Also, it includes the /usr/share/common-licenses/ directory, so that those copyright files can refer to the common licenses without copying them verbatimly. >> Also, in this particular case, since ASL2.0 is incompatible with GPLv2, >> we actually need to take advantage of the "or later" clause, and >> "upgrades" it to "GPLv3+". Listing the license as GPLv2+ would confuse >> the user that GPLv2 covers the program, but in fact it is "effectively" >> GPLv3. > > This possibly depends on whether the licence information refers to the > source or binary package. Fedora explicitly says binary, for instance. > I am unaware of this distinction. Maybe a website explaining this would be helpful. > For what it's worth, the information for Fedora and Debian packagers is > > and > . > They're not necessarily consistent, and things may be somewhat different > for GNU, but they provide a reasonable indication of the legalities. I think we should improve the status quote by documenting the license accurately in the license field. What do you think?