Licenses: being finicky

[Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult]

On 14.02.24 21:37, tlaronde at kergis.com wrote:

Hi,

> Some meson.build, for example, have a SPDX-License-Identifier: tag,

you're raising a good point. I've already been thinking about replacing
the repeated long lincense text all over the source files by tiny
SPDX-License-Identifier (possibly even on per-subdir / module basis).

> 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.

Since we've got lots of different license texts (not checked whether
it's just editorial differences), I'd assume it's per-file basis.

Makes sense to me: as soon as somebody's writing some (non-trivial)
text (on his own), he's the copyright holder and thus can decide on
licensing of his work (or could transfer that right to somebody else
via contract). And it doesn't seem that X (at least the server tree)
ever had some clear rules on what licenses are being accepted for
mainlining.

> this is identified as "X11", the "MIT" being the same without this
> fourth paragraph. (I suspect this distinction is rather new.)

The difference between X11 and MIT seems to be the first is explicitly
mentioning the X consortium as authors. My interpretation this is more
a formalized placeholder and pretty much the same as MIT. IANAL, but I'd
assume that we could change from X11 to MIT, even if it meant a being
different license.

IMHO, the paragraph about names / trademarks is redundant, since using
speaking in anybody else's name or using his trademarks needs explicit
grant anyways, and that even isn't subject to copyright at all (at least
in the jurisdictions I know)

By the way, we (or anybody who forks) could even relicense as GPL.
I wonder whether that would trigger some interesting media coverage.

hmm, let's have a long flamewar about that, big enough that it can't
be overseen by the media ;-)

> When creating meson files for building, is there some rule regarding
> this?

I'd like to extend this question to any new code / files.

> 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?

IMHO we should first start moving to spdx tags on per case basis (get
rid of all the long redundant texts), review the status quo and then
decide on future standard license (on per-package basis - libraries
might need different one than tools or the Xserver)


--mtx

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Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult
Free software and Linux embedded engineering
info at metux.net -- +49-151-27565287