License issues (e.g. mod_throttle, mod_watch)

[Christian Weisgerber]

Andrew Turner <zombie at i4free.co.nz> wrote:

> Would adding LICENSE= to port Makefiles help?

Speaking from OpenBSD experience, no.  They originally tried this,
but when you look at thousands of ports, you will find numerous
cases of homegrown licenses that cannot be neatly summerized in one
line.

OpenBSD introduced variables PERMIT_{DISTFILES,PACKAGE}_{CDROM,FTP},
that are roughly equivalent to (if a bit more fine-grained than)
our NO_PACKAGE/NO_CDROM/RESTRICTED.  Porters need to scrutinize the
included licenses and set the respective variables.

One particularly annoying case that is probably as common as
explicitly restrictive licensing is the complete lack of any license.
Alas, this means that basic copyright law forbids any redistribution,
use, etc, even if this was not in the author's intent.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy at mips.inka.de