On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Bill Morris <morris@ee.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-06-16 at 14:43 -0700, Ken Conley wrote:
>> It's a simple addition, but I'm wondering if it is redundant with the
>> URL.  i.e. while there is a general URL for the LGPL license, there is
>> a specific URL for the 3.0 license:
>>
>
> That is a reasonable solution, but not as machine parseable. I can think
> of use cases where someone doesn't want to install GPLed code, but I'm
> not sure there is a use case for the version info.

Basically I'm wondering if

<license url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt"
version="3.0">LGPL</<license>

is preferable to

<license url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt">LGPLv3</<license>

The separate version attribute favors the family of license, names the
license as a physical entity.  I'm mildly leaning towards the latter
because license versions are not really equivalent to software
versions.  GPLv3 really is a distinct and different license from
GPLv2, it's not an upgrade per se.

>
>> It seems that the versioned URL should be preferred whenever possible.
>
> This should be included in the best practices section of the REP that
> covers licenses.
>
>> A REP on license strings would be a great contribution.  If you're
>> curious, I've included a list of known license strings according to
>> rosdoc.
>
> This REP would also be a great place to mention best practices regarding
> not using GPl or other viral licenses for message definitions.
>
> Should there be a better way of specifying multiple licenses?

I don't have many good ideas here, except based on my experience
normalizing licenses on our end I would prefer if:

 1) Explanations of licenses are put in the <description> instead,
e.g. "GPL because of list.h; other files released under BSD" should
just say "GPL".

 2) Distinguishing between dual-license and dominant license
contamination.  For example, if you happen to include a GPL file in
your package, then the license is "GPL", not "GPL,Rest is Foo".  If
you want to indicate that the rest of the files are Foo, say so in the
description.  In other words, "Apache,GPL" should mean "this is
dual-licensed as Apache and GPL", not "some of the code is Apache,
some of the code is GPL".

Also, I would include "please, please don't use Creative Commons.
Even Creative Commons says don't do it":
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F

 - Ken

>> - Ken
>>
>> http://www.ros.org/doc/api/licenses.html
>>
>> ???
>> Apache 2.0
>> Apache License 2.0
>> Apache License 2.0/BSD
>> Apache License, Version 2.0
>> Apache License, Version 2.0 (contaminated)
>> BSD
>> BSD (learning) and Boost/research-only (inference
>> BSD (new)
>> BSD (non-commercial use)
>> BSD, Boost
>> BSD, Boost Software License (Poco)
>> BSD, Creative Commons
>> BSD, GPL, LGPL
>> BSD, LGPL
>> BSD, LGPL, GPL for sigblock
>> BSD, NOSA
>> BSD, Python License
>> BSD, based on vicon_mocap from the starmac stacks
>> BSD, except for source files individually marked otherwise
>> BSD, APACHE 2.0
>> BSD, GPL
>> BSD-style
>> BSD/GPL
>> Boost Software LicenseVersion 1.0
>> CC BY-NC-SA 2.5
>> CeCILL-B (BSD-like)
>> CeCiLL
>> Closed source
>> Commercial
>> Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)
>> Creative Commons 3.0 by
>> Creative Commons Attribution
>> Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
>> CreativeCommons BY-NC-SA License1
>> CreativeCommons-by-nc-sa-2.0
>> Enea Scioni
>> GNU
>> GNU LGPL 2.1
>> GPL26
>> GPL + runtime exception
>> GPL because of list.h; other files released under BSD
>> GPL v2
>> GPL v2 or later
>> GPL v2 with linking exception
>> GPL+linking exception
>> GPL+runtime exception
>> GPLv2+
>> GPLv3
>> GPLv3+
>> LGPL
>> LGPL (contaminated)
>> LGPL - BSD
>> LGPL v2
>> LGPL v2.1 or later
>> LGPL,BSD
>> LGPL,Boost Software License
>> LGPL/BSD
>> LGPLv2.1 / BSD
>> LGPLv3
>> Lesser GPL and Apache License, Version 2.0
>> MIT
>> MIT License, refer to dom.txt in the "others" folder.
>> Many
>> Mozilla Public License Version 1.1
>> No Clue
>> Proprietary
>> Public Domain
>> Public domain
>> QPL
>> The Apache License 2.0
>> Unknown1
>> Various
>> WhoCares
>> ZLib
>> babel
>> binary only
>> cffi
>> free for non-commercial use
>> proprietary
>> trivial-features
>> unknown
>> wxWindows
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 1:55 PM, Bill Morris <morris@ee.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote:
>> > This probably isn't a priority for anyone but, I'd like to propose that
>> > the license tag have a version attribute
>> > http://www.ros.org/wiki/Manifest/XML#A.3Clicense.3E_tag
>> >
>> > <license url="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html"
>> > version="3.0">LGPL</<license>
>> >
>> > It may also be worth including in a REP somewhere examples of common
>> > values so we don't end up with every possible permutation of "lesser
>> > GPL", "lgpl", "LGPL", "LGPLv3", etc.
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > ros-users@code.ros.org
>> > https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>> >
>
>
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