[ros-users] manifest.xml license tag

Bill Morris morris at ee.ccny.cuny.edu
Sat Jun 18 05:31:53 UTC 2011


On Fri, 2011-06-17 at 08:56 -0700, Ken Conley wrote: 
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Bill Morris <morris at ee.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-06-16 at 15:23 -0700, Ken Conley wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Bill Morris <morris at 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.
> >
> > The advantage with the idea of grouping licenses is that decreases the
> > number of permutations. However, I'm not sure what use there is for a
> > machine parseable license tag besides code audits.
> >
> >> 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
> >
> > Another problematic one is undefined licenses. Anything is better than
> > undefined because I can't agree or disagree to an undefined license.
> 
> There are others too that are descriptive but don't actually name a
> license, e.g. 'closed source' and 'proprietary'.
> 
> Do you have time to author up a draft of a REP for this?  I can
> contribute a bit of text, but right now the main focus is on getting
> things frozen for Electric.

One other issue I found today is that except for unary stacks, the
license tag in stack.xml seems redundant.

I'm pretty busy but I can try to find some time between now and July 1st
to write up a rough draft. 





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