Adding licensing info to my ports: some questions

[Eitan Adler]

2012/1/16 Nikola Lečić <nikola.lecic at anthesphoria.net>:
> Hello,
>
> I'm about to add licensing info to all my 25 ports. I hoped that a
> chapter dedicated to licensing issues would appear in the Porters
> Handbook, but since this hasn't happened so far, I decided to try
> without it.
>
> Here are my questions; sorry if some of them are already answered in
> the past.
>
> 1) Will licensing section ever appear in the Porters Handbook? :-)

Yes

> 2) Should I mark the ports that explicitly state "X11" with "MIT"?

Yes, or you may break the build. Not that I've ever done that of course ;)

> 3) Intentionally no difference between 2- and 3-clause BSD?

I hope not. We should probably have a BSD2, BSD3, and BSD4 license.
For now mark it with a comment (or offer a patch to the db file too)

> 4) How should I state eg. "LGPL21 or any later version" or "GPL2
>   only i.e. no later version"?

> 5) What if licensing info differs for entire source file and actually
>   installed files? In textproc/kmfl-sil-ezra source file, the font is
>   licensed OFL and the keyboard layout X11; the port installs only
>   keyboard layout. Should I state just "MIT" in the Makefile?

LICENSE_COMB=multi I think

> 6) I need three new items added to the licenses database because they
>   should be considered as 'known' licenses and thus belonging to the
>   'Case 1' in bsd.licenses.mk. There are: Common Public License, SIL
>   Open Font License and Public Domain [non-license]. I'd gladly
>   submit a PR, but I'd appreciate if someone could check this first,
>   especially _LICENSE_GROUPS_* including COPYFREE status.

Please submit this as a patch in a PR and email me. I'll make sure
they get added.

Common Public License is not copyfree.
SIL Open Font License is not copyfree.
Putting something in the Public Domain doesn't work in any meaningful
sense and is not a license.

I am not a lawyer and I am not giving legal advice.
-- 
Eitan Adler