Subject: Re: What licenses should be included in /usr/share/common-licenses?

From: Sean Whitton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2023 18:31:00 +0100

Hello Russ,

Thank you for working on this.

On Sat 09 Sep 2023 at 08:35pm -07, Russ Allbery wrote:

> In order to structure the discussion and prod people into thinking about
> the implications, I will make the following straw man proposal.  This is
> what I would do if the decision was entirely up to me:
>
>     Licenses will be included in common-licenses if they meet all of the
>     following criteria:
>
>     * The license is DFSG-free.
>     * Exactly the same license wording is used by all works covered by it.
>     * The license applies to at least 100 source packages in Debian.
>     * The license text is longer than 25 lines.

Something that hasn't been brought up yet is the effects on NEW review.
I would like to expand the idea of the same license wording being used
by all works, to include the additional requirement that there aren't
any very similar licenses that are easily confused with the license.

For, if it's a license with small variations of any kind, including
variations that are not project-specific things like the names of
copyright holders, then NEW review is much easier if all the text is
right there in d/copyright.

I would be in favour of the 25 lines criterion.  The main problem with
manipulating d/copyright is only the really long licenses, IME.

-- 
Sean Whitton