Licenses: being finicky

[tlaronde at kergis.com]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 08:22:59PM +1000, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 09:37:43PM +0100, tlaronde at kergis.com wrote:
> > Some meson.build, for example, have a SPDX-License-Identifier: tag,
> > where "MIT" is mentionned, applying (I think) to the file itself, and
> > the project has an entry with a pair (license: 'MIT') applying to the
> > data by itself.
> > 
> > But, for example, xcbproto has a license with a (classical, for me)
> > fourth clause forbiding use of the names of the authors without
> > permission to advertise etc.
> > 
> > Acoording to:
> > 
> > https://spdx.org/licenses/
> > 
> > this is identified as "X11", the "MIT" being the same without this
> > fourth paragraph. (I suspect this distinction is rather new.)
> > 
> > When creating meson files for building, is there some rule regarding
> > this? 
> > 
> > I think that the correct way is to state 'X11' or 'MIT' or
> > whatever matches COPYING or COPYRIGHTS or whatever file explains the
> > license status and to conform, simply because this exists and is
> > standardized, to the SPDX list of identifiers.
> > 
> > What do other think about this?
> 
> we've recently done this work for Fedora so you can probably get the
> various licenses from there. Fun fact, some projects have *a lot* of
> SPDX identifers (i think the record is 15).
> 
> In the end whether the license entry in meson.build matters is very
> questionable and only the actual code files and maybe COPYING matters
> (but do ask your preferred lawyer for confirmation).

Since a packaging system using meson could advertise the license
from what is set in the project in meson.build, I think that it should be set
right there and perhaps conforming to the SPDX identifiers (the SPDX
identifiers in the meson.build meson_options.txt are less crucial, one
could infer that if someone---me for example---is contributing, he's
willing to contribute under X11 license and that this is what applies
if lacking a more defined license identifier).

> 
> Licenses are also compatible or direct derivatives of each other so X11
> and MIT are compatible and unless you're into lawyerese it doesn't
> matter which one is listed in meson.build.
> 
> > Note: I'm not planing to review "correct" attribution between X11 and
> > MIT in all the Xorg projects---I'm sufficiently late on my schedule
> > with what I have to do without starting to rover around. Furthermore,
> > X11 has been historically identified as 'MIT'...
> 
> The main question: what are you're trying to achieve here? The
> vast majority of our projects are old and new projects tend to
> (or should) copy/paste from SDPX anyway.

I'm just _adding_ (not removing autoconf/automake stuff) meson build
files to Xorg projects I'm reviewing (because I need to track bugs with
X11/Mesa and kernel DRMKMS on NetBSD), so I want to have everything as
correct as possible.

> 
> PS: If I were you I'd be *really* careful trying to update old
> repositories. We've made people maintainers for less! ;)

I will be careful ;)
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ kergis +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
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