On 02/06/2011 05:21 AM, Rajko M. wrote:
On Saturday, February 05, 2011 07:13:50 pm Dave Plater wrote:
AFAIK there's no such license as GPL anyway so rpmlint should fail on it.
GPL without version string, doesn't differ from GPLvX+ (GPL version X or later). As in software, and I suspect, as in law, it should refer to the latest valid version.
(How good idea is to give someone else power to decide what is happening with your software is another topic.
GPL versions are introduced to allow people to refer to particular set of rules, not some unknown future version, so those that use GPLvX+ exclude earlier, but still accept something that can develop in direction they don't like.)
The problem is that openSUSE have strict rules for the license field which have to be adhered to for packages in the main distribution and unsuspecting budding packagers may run up against them by putting the wrong information in the license field after using the spec file as an example. An rpmlint check such as this would save time for legal review and also catch any older packages, that are incorrectly licensed when they are updated. It would be nice if it was "ok" to put a plain ambiguous "GPL" in the license field, I think that "MIT" is most probably the easiest in this respect. I perceive that the (L)GPL continually evolves in an attempt to allow opensource developers to create work and at the same time benefit if their work is recognised by the sharks of this world, that make such licensing necessary. MIT on the other hand is for those that are qualifying in some academic field and the work they are developing is their thesis. IMHO these are the only necessary opensource licenses. The others, except for the WTFPL which is for developers who are sick of all this licensing *@#&%, are either throwbacks from the past or attempts to have one foot in the commercial world and one foot in opensource. Dave P Damned gmail smtp server is down although there's nothing on the web site reverting to webafrica.org.za -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org