License Framework: Develop Best Practices

[Marco Bröder]

Hello,

I know the ports license framework is very new and not mature yet.

But it is not very useful in its current state, because several popular 
licenses are missing and some license foo is not right / specific enough to be 
considered legally correct (for example there is no 'one BSD License', there 
are at least three of them, all legally different). The legal consequences of 
even very small differences can be very huge. We actually have to make this 
legally right or the whole thing is useless.

Some maintainers already added some license foo to their ports. At the moment 
there is more guessing than knowing what actually should be done from a 
maintainers point of view. This is especially true for dual / multi / combo 
licensing (for example 'GPLv2 or any later version' is not really the same as 
'GPLv2 or GPLv3' combo).

Before this even grows, could we please start developing best practices and 
document them into Porters Handbook, as soon as possible? Thanks!

I will start with a few points:

*** bsd.license.db.mk ***

We really need to rework it.

It should at least contain the most popular / often used licenses -and- their 
-correct- versions. The latter is not always the case at the moment. And the 
versions should have only -one- format, not multiples. I suggest to always use 
a something like 'LGPLv2.1' and not 'LGPL21'. At least it has to be consistent 
across all licenses.

I find it especially important to have a expression for 'version X or any 
later version' (for example 'LGPLv2+'), since the following dummy example is 
not adequate:

LICENSE=        LGPLv2 LGPLv2.1 LGPLv3 LGPLv3.1 LGPLv3.2
LICENSE_COMB=    dual

... and so on for every future versions - it does not scale well and has to be 
changed with every new future version. Instead it should be just 'LGPLv2+' 
and stay there unchanged forever.

Here is my suggestion what should be there at a minimum (probably more 
needed):

***

ARTLv1.0    # Artistic License 1.0
ARTLv2.0    # Artistic License 2.0

ASLv1.1    # Apache License 1.1
ASLv2.0    # Apache License 2.0

BSD-2-clause    # Simplified BSD License
BSD-3-clause    # Modified or New BSD License
BSD-4-clause    # Original BSD License

BSLv1.0    # Boost Software License 1.0

CDDLv1.0    # Common Development and Distribution License 1.0

EPLv1.0    # Eclipse Public License 1.0

GFDLv1.1    # GNU Free Documentation License 1.1
GFDLv1.2    # GNU Free Documentation License 1.2
GFDLv1.3    # GNU Free Documentation License 1.3

GPLv2    # GNU General Public License 2
GPLv2+    # GNU General Public License 2 or any later version
GPLv3    # GNU General Public License 3
GPLv3+    # GNU General Public License 3 or any later version

ISC    # ISC License

LGPLv2    # GNU Lesser General Public License 2
LGPLv2+    # GNU Lesser General Public License 2 or any later version
LGPLv2.1    # GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1
LGPLv2.1+    # GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 or any later version
LGPLv3    # GNU Lesser General Public License 3
LGPLv3+    # GNU Lesser General Public License 3 or any later version

MIT    # MIT license

MPLv1.0    # Mozilla Public License 1.0
MPLv1.1    # Mozilla Public License 1.1

PD    # Public Domain license

X11    # X11 license

***

There are probably more licenses and / or versions to add or to change.

And there are most likely more issues to discuss ...

-- 
Regards
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