svn commit: r421549 - in head: . Mk

[Kubilay Kocak]

On 9/09/2016 8:06 PM, Pietro Cerutti wrote:
> On 2016-09-09 10:57, Kubilay Kocak wrote:
>> On 9/09/2016 6:35 PM, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
>>> On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 06:29:33PM +1000, Kubilay Kocak wrote:
>>>> On 9/09/2016 4:26 PM, Baptiste Daroussin wrote:
>>>>> In both case that means there is NO license and then we
>>>>> should not distribute them at all.
>>>> 
>>>> There are cases where software has no license, the author says
>>>> so, but they mean, and/or say 'free to do with what you
>>>> please'. This is neither NONE, nor undefined (in terms of the
>>>> 'terms'), nor PD, nor 'empty(LICENSE)'.
>>> 
>>> That's why I prefer something along 
>>> UNCLEAR/MOOT/VAGUE/CONTROVERSIAL/etc. to cover all those "weird" 
>>> cases and be done with it.
>>> 
>>> ./danfe
>>> 
>> 
>> And precisely why UNDEFINED was suggested over NONE.
>> 
>> The reason for UNDEFINED over others? Not as prescriptive or
>> subjective. More inclusive (better coverage/utility).
> 
> Which is likely the problem here. As this thread clearly shows, the
> lack of an explicit license could mean different things depending on 
> different factors, including i) who you're talking to, ii) the
> country where the software was developed or resides, iii) others
> UNKNOWN to me. Ultimately, a court could state the exact meaning of
> the lack of a license, but we don't want to get there for every
> single piece of abandonware that's not declaring a license. UNDEFINED
> is wrong. The license could well be defined by laws even if not
> defined in the source code.

Indeed. I like this argument, both in terms of legal definitions, and
that UNDEFINED is still prescriptive, though not as much as NONE.

> The fact that we do not know what the lack of license means makes me 
> feel safer with UNKNOWN than with UNDEFINED.

+1

UNKNOWN also sounds like it means what it does (in this implementation)
and both of the following still make sense:

  LICENSE=UNKNOWN
  LICENCE_PERMS=FOO BAR

Result: packaged and distributed

and

  LICENSE=UNKNOWN (no known 'terms')

Result: no package or code (re)distribution (no LICENSE_PERMS)

The latter would be the one that could replace the empty(LICENSE) cases
we have now.

./koobs