On Tue, Feb 11, Jordi Massaguer Pla wrote:

Hi,

I have this package that has subpackages. What should I do with the license files? Should they be part of the main package? Should I copy them into every subpackage? Should I create a "-doc" subpackage and make it a "supplements" of all the other subpackages?

Do they have all the same License? Does the sub-packages require the main package? If they have all the same license, and there is one package required by everything, put it into this package. Else every package should have the license file. *-doc and supplements is a bad idea, there is no gurantee that the *-doc package gets installed, and this would be a violation of some licenses. Sometimes people put all licenses into a *-license sub-package and require that, but then there is no simple matching, to which packages this license belongs. Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Architect SLES & MicroOS SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany Managing Director: Felix Imendoerffer (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 11 Feb 2020, Jordi Massaguer Pla wrote:

On 02/11/2020 10:43 AM, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:

...

On Tue, Feb 11, Jordi Massaguer Pla wrote:

...

Hi,

I have this package that has subpackages. What should I do with the license files? Should they be part of the main package? Should I copy them into every subpackage? Should I create a "-doc" subpackage and make it a "supplements" of all the other subpackages? Do they have all the same License? Does the sub-packages require the main package?

If they have all the same license, and there is one package required by everything, put it into this package.

Else every package should have the license file.

*-doc and supplements is a bad idea, there is no gurantee that the *-doc package gets installed, and this would be a violation of some licenses.

Sometimes people put all licenses into a *-license sub-package and require that, but then there is no simple matching, to which packages this license belongs.

Thorsten

Thanks. They all have the same license. I will put the license only in the main package which is required by all of them.

I think that technically that's the same violation Thorsten mentions because you can go to the download site and just download the binary rpm of the sub-package which then does not include the license. If the terms of the license are that way (you have to distribute the license with X) then you have to put it in every subpackage. For "regular" licenses (IIRC, IANAL), when you download something and it doesn't contain a license and nothing elsewhere said what it is then you have _no_ license. For some licenses that's OK but for permissive ones that's not OK which would put the GPL in the bucket Thorsten mentions? For the GPL you also have to say where you can get/request sources, not sure how those twists apply to say https://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/x86_64/gcc9-9.2.1+git1022-... which I can download directly without any disclaimer page. Starting at https:://download.opensuse.org/ also doesn't present me with any relevant information other than the too "hidden" link to the "source" repositories. As usual, if you start legal arguments you're tapping into a minefield. So I suggest to simply apply some common sense. I still hope for some auto"magic" at some point, derived from License: tags. Richard. -- Richard Biener SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany; GF: Felix Imendörffer; HRB 36809 (AG Nuernberg)