svn commit: r421549 - in head: . Mk

[Alexey Dokuchaev]

On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 08:37:18AM +0200, Baptiste Daroussin wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 06:29:50AM +0000, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 08:26:31AM +0200, Baptiste Daroussin wrote:
> > > NONE is not intended to be a fallback because one hasn't set yet the
> > > LICENSE knob[.]
> > > 
> > > I do like the 'NONE' word, it sounds accurate and straight forward to
> > > me, but I'm not native, if its sounds misleading we can still have a
> > > better word if one proposes.  But clearly imho UNDEFINED/UNCLEAR/
> > > UNKNOWN are representing what we aiming at here.
> > 
> > I agree with Mark, UNCLEAR is a nicer and having least unwanted
> > connotations word.
> 
> What connotation? if the sources have NO license at all, for me it is not
> unclear, it clearly has no license? am I missing something?

IANAL, "you'll have to check with your own legal counsel regarding your
particular project, but generally speaking, the absence of a license
means that default copyright laws apply.  This means that you retain all
rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute,
or create derivative works from your work." [1]

That said, technically sources cannot have NO license at all.  Another thing
is that often there is (often implied) license, e.g. it is stated on the
project page somewhere, but missing in the tarball, or is different in some
or another way.  I've seen people switched GPLv2->3, but forgot to update
file headers and/or their COPYING file, etc.

If we want to have LICENSE=NONE (isn't it the same as UNDEFINED?) and also
UNCLEAR/UNKNOWN, then why can't one of these cases be simply undef(LICENSE)?
If we want to have some specific word that covers missing/unclear/whatever
common cases, I think UNCLEAR wins here.

./danfe

[1] http://choosealicense.com/no-license/