svn commit: r421549 - in head: . Mk

[Baptiste Daroussin]

On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 12:03:00AM +1000, Kubilay Kocak wrote:
> On 8/09/2016 11:15 PM, Dmitry Marakasov wrote:
> > Author: amdmi3 Date: Thu Sep  8 13:15:06 2016 New Revision: 421549 
> > URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/ports/421549
> > 
> > Log: Add support added for LICENSE=NONE, use it when the port
> > doesn't have cleanly defined licensing terms.  Note that without
> > clean license allowing you to use and distribute the code it would be
> > be illegal to do so in many jurisdictions, so for ports with NONE 
> > license no distfiles or packages are distributed.
> 
> I'm glad this finally got added, though I'm worried that NONE is
> ambiguous and will unnecessarily cause otherwise package'able /
> distribute'able software to not be (inadvertently), and that None says
> more than we want its behaviour to mean.
> 
> I truly do not intend to $bikeshed on the name, but are we saying:
> 
> That ports with no *explicit* license terms should not be
> distributed/packaged by default?
> 
> If so, shouldn't empty(LICENSE) do this?
> 
> If all this does is avoid not having a whole bunch of existing ports not
> be packaged because they don't yet have LICENSE set, let's fix that.
> It's a great incentive to maintainers to get them added (explicitly). We
> could then even upgrade adding LICENSE to a requirement for ports rather
> than being optional (as it has been).
> 
> What if a piece of software doesn't have 'cleanly' (what is the actual
> definition we should use?) defined license terms, but says/implies by
> some other method that it is free to be distributed/packaged? Say for
> example the software has debian/spec files in the sources but otherwise
> says nothing.
> 
> Might LICENSE=UNDEFINED be a less ambiguous term/name for this "cant
> distribute/package because we want to be legally safe" behaviour?
> 

None is designed for software where the software/source where upstream clearly
claims (I don't care, I am not a lawyer there is no license OR for dead upstream
where no traces of any statement of a license can be fine in the sources).

In both case that means there is NO license and then we should not distribute
them at all.

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.

Best regards,
Bapt
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