On Sep 5, 2009, at 6:33 AM, monipol wrote:
On 05/09/2009, at 03:34, Saadat wrote:
My application uses components, which have GPL2, GPL, BSD and MIT
licenses.
Looking at the packaging instructions, it seems that I would have to
have
one license under which the application is released. If I cannot
resolve the
license issues to the satisfaction of the Fink distribution approval
process, I was thinking that I could just release the binary
distribution
for now and release the source distribution after verifying the
license
stuff.
As Martin's already said, you may use the umbrella OSI-Approved
licence if every licence is in fact approved by OSI [3]. On the other
hand, can't these components be separate packages? If they're
libraries we prefer they're packaged separately. That helps with
licencing (using a more specific licence rather than OSI-approved),
upgrading (users won't have to rebuild the whole package if there's
only been a change in one of the libraries), and reuse (other packages
that want to use that library can just reuse the one that's already
installed).
I have two further comments on this issue.
(1) The fink project is fundamentally a source-based software
distribution, with binaries provided as a courtesy to users (if the
fink project team has time to produce them). The only way to start
out distributing in binary-only form is to distribute fink-
compatible .deb files through some other channel (such as your own
website). But notice that both GPL2 and GPL3 then require that this
other channel provide the source to the packages, including any
modifications you made to get it to compile or to customize it for
your situation. So you won't have gained anything in the process.
(2) Software which combines GPL2 or GPL3-licensed components with
other, compatible, open-source-licensed components should use
"License: GPL2" or "License: GPL3" as the fink license. The reasoning
is that the GPL is the most restrictive of the open licenses, by
requiring (rather than just allowing) source distribution, so the
entire package is going to be bound by the terms of the GPL. The Free
Software Foundation has a webpage listing the GPL-compatible licenses.
-- Dave
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