On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 2:52 PM h-k-81@hotmail.com wrote:
Hello
During a package review [1], the question arose whether the package under review had an acceptable license [2]. Looking at the git log I can see the following commits were done to the COPYRIGHT file:
commit d7c9ecae0492bbdd449fd8e3ccf94abf73ea5f36 Author: Kornel Lesiński <kornel@geekhood.net> Date: Sat Dec 5 14:46:48 2015 +0000 Relicense under GPL ... ... commit 3fe4b3520e0502d0a2822d6d19ef8374960c0a3c Author: Kornel Lesiński <kornel@geekhood.net> Date: Sun Mar 2 19:18:51 2014 +0000 Changed license to the simplified BSD license
It seems that the license changed two times in the past. I'm not sure what that would mean and if it's okay, as I have little experience with open source licenses.
Based on the quickest glance, I wonder whether the current maintainer has adequately preserved any third-party license notices from the "simplified BSD" period (which I guess predates the Rust version), but we normally wouldn't do that level of research based on pure speculation. There's nothing inherently problematic about a BSD-licensed project relicensing to GPLv3.
FYI: The package that I am trying to get into fedora is a rewrite of a C library [3] that is already packaged for fedora. So this should mean that the license is acceptable, right?
Not necessarily, since it is possible for licensing problems in previously-included packages to have been overlooked, or to have been dealt with in ways that may not satisfy present-day Fedora standards. But I don't see anything here that suggests there is any problem.
Richard
Incidentally, I think one of the historical licenses noted in the COPYRIGHT file may need to be submitted for Fedora approval, assuming it still covers anything (although it might not apply to the Rust code at all).
On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 4:51 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 2:52 PM h-k-81@hotmail.com wrote:
Hello
During a package review [1], the question arose whether the package under review had an acceptable license [2]. Looking at the git log I can see the following commits were done to the COPYRIGHT file:
commit d7c9ecae0492bbdd449fd8e3ccf94abf73ea5f36 Author: Kornel Lesiński <kornel@geekhood.net> Date: Sat Dec 5 14:46:48 2015 +0000 Relicense under GPL ... ... commit 3fe4b3520e0502d0a2822d6d19ef8374960c0a3c Author: Kornel Lesiński <kornel@geekhood.net> Date: Sun Mar 2 19:18:51 2014 +0000 Changed license to the simplified BSD license
It seems that the license changed two times in the past. I'm not sure what that would mean and if it's okay, as I have little experience with open source licenses.
Based on the quickest glance, I wonder whether the current maintainer has adequately preserved any third-party license notices from the "simplified BSD" period (which I guess predates the Rust version), but we normally wouldn't do that level of research based on pure speculation. There's nothing inherently problematic about a BSD-licensed project relicensing to GPLv3.
FYI: The package that I am trying to get into fedora is a rewrite of a C library [3] that is already packaged for fedora. So this should mean that the license is acceptable, right?
Not necessarily, since it is possible for licensing problems in previously-included packages to have been overlooked, or to have been dealt with in ways that may not satisfy present-day Fedora standards. But I don't see anything here that suggests there is any problem.
Richard