[packagekit] Free and non-free filter

[Richard Hughes]

On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 16:32 -0500, Robin Norwood wrote:
> Alrighty.  Do you want to consider the Fedora license list page
> 'canonical' for the license tags, or do you want to maintain a separate
> list?

I don't see the need in a separate list - I really don't want to
maintain two lists. Do any of the other distros have such a list? The
fedora one seems to be the most comprehensive.

> With the Fedora page, other distros would have to use our tags, which
> they probably won't want to do.  Maintaining our own list would be a
> huge PITA though.

Tell me about it. :-)

> Also, at least in Fedora, dual-licensing syntax is allowed.  For
> instance, the License field for perl is:
> 
> (GPL+ or Artistic) and (GPLv2+ or Artistic)
> 
> I blame the lawyers.  Well, and Spot, but mostly the lawyers. :-)

Ick ick ick. We need to parse this carefully.

> How do you propose we deal with beasts like the above?  FWIW, the
> associated comment reads:
> 
> # Modules Tie::File and Getopt::Long are licenced under "GPLv2+ or Artistic,"
> # we have to reflect that in the sub-package containing them.
> # FIXME: Digest::MD5 has a must-advertise-RSA license with an exception,
> # the tag does not reflect that (yet).

Well, which is the "worst" licence?

> So, in this case, I'm not entirely sure why the entire package doesn't
> count as 'GPLv2+ or Artistic', since that's the most specific license
> that covers the whole package...not counting the Digest::MD5 stuff.

Again, err on the bad.

> Fwiw, I don't think the License field for Fedora packages is fully
> intended to be machine parsable, *but* it is pretty regular, so we can
> probably get 95% of the way there.

Sure. I would really like it to be machine readable. Tom, would it be
possible to formalize more the licence format?

> Isn't licensing fun?

Fun, when fun is defined as 1-fun.

Richard.