bzip2-testing LICENSE

bzip2-testing LICENSE

[Randy MacLeod]

Hi,

I've been reviewing the work that Rahul has done to package
bzip2-testing for Yocto / Open Embedded. One question that I have
is about the license terms of the repo. In brief it seems
that the COPYING/LICENSE files are left over from the original
projects and that it's possible that since the remaining
files are data rather than source, that the LICENSE terms no longer
apply. For a more details explanation, see:

 
https://lists.openembedded.org/g/openembedded-core/message/138521?p=,,,20,0,0,0::Created,,bzip2+test+suite,20,2,0,73224911

My conclusion is that the bzip2-ptest yocto package should be
tagged with just:
    LICENSE = "GPLv3+"
due to the terms of the top level run-tests.sh script rather
that the alternative:
    LICENSE = \
    "bzip2-1.0.6 & GPLv3+ & Apache-2.0 & MS-PL & BSD-3-Clause & Zlib"

If you agree, then I'd be happy to send a commit to remove
the license files in the sub-directories and include a nice long
explanation in the commit log based on the email referenced above.
If not that's certainly fine as well but I would be puzzled by such a 
result! :)

Note that Yocto users typically automatically fetch the source at
build time from the original SRC_URI so this certainly doesn't
affect distribution of the bzip2-test source.

Thanks for your attention ,

# Randy MacLeod
# Wind River Linux

Re: bzip2-testing LICENSE

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Randy,

On Tue, 2020-05-26 at 16:35 -0400, Randy MacLeod wrote:
> I've been reviewing the work that Rahul has done to package
> bzip2-testing for Yocto / Open Embedded. One question that I have
> is about the license terms of the repo. In brief it seems
> that the COPYING/LICENSE files are left over from the original
> projects and that it's possible that since the remaining
> files are data rather than source

You are right. For the purpose of the bzip2-testing project the only
"source" is the test runner script run-tests.sh. Everything else can be
seen as data. The top-level README file does explain:

   This is a collection of "interesting" .bz2 files that can be used to
   test bzip2 works correctly. They come from different projects.

   Each directory should contain a README file explaining where the
   .bz2 files originally came from. Plus a reference to the (Free
   Software) license that the project files were distributed under.

> If you agree, then I'd be happy to send a commit to remove
> the license files in the sub-directories and include a nice long
> explanation in the commit log based on the email referenced above.
> If not that's certainly fine as well but I would be puzzled by such
> a result! :)

But I would like to keep the subdir README files and the license files
that describe how those projects distributed their data (and code).
Even if we are only redistributing the data files from those projects
it seems more correct to keep the license files and copyright claims.

Even if we did claim all the data files are not copyrightable and we
don't need a license, we already have a license that allows the using,
sharing and modification of the data. Having explicit permission to
redistribute these file seems a good thing. Even if some people might
claim we don't need any such permission in the first place. And it just
seems polite to mention the origins and the terms people made these
files available under.

Cheers,

Mark

Re: bzip2-testing LICENSE

[Randy MacLeod]

On 2020-05-26 5:28 p.m., Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi Randy,
> 
> On Tue, 2020-05-26 at 16:35 -0400, Randy MacLeod wrote:
>> I've been reviewing the work that Rahul has done to package
>> bzip2-testing for Yocto / Open Embedded. One question that I have
>> is about the license terms of the repo. In brief it seems
>> that the COPYING/LICENSE files are left over from the original
>> projects and that it's possible that since the remaining
>> files are data rather than source
> 
> You are right. For the purpose of the bzip2-testing project the only
> "source" is the test runner script run-tests.sh. Everything else can be
> seen as data. The top-level README file does explain:
> 
>     This is a collection of "interesting" .bz2 files that can be used to
>     test bzip2 works correctly. They come from different projects.
> 
>     Each directory should contain a README file explaining where the
>     .bz2 files originally came from. Plus a reference to the (Free
>     Software) license that the project files were distributed under.
> 
>> If you agree, then I'd be happy to send a commit to remove
>> the license files in the sub-directories and include a nice long
>> explanation in the commit log based on the email referenced above.
>> If not that's certainly fine as well but I would be puzzled by such
>> a result! :)
> 
> But I would like to keep the subdir README files and the license files
> that describe how those projects distributed their data (and code).
> Even if we are only redistributing the data files from those projects
> it seems more correct to keep the license files and copyright claims.
> 
> Even if we did claim all the data files are not copyrightable and we
> don't need a license, we already have a license that allows the using,
> sharing and modification of the data. Having explicit permission to
> redistribute these file seems a good thing. Even if some people might
> claim we don't need any such permission in the first place. And it just
> seems polite to mention the origins and the terms people made these
> files available under.

Okay, I'm glad you agree with my opinion and we may change the
Yocto recipe license summary.

Your position regarding keeping the bzip2-tests README and licenses
files makes sense now that I've had some time mull it over and see
things from your point of view. In summary no change is required.

Thanks for your response and your work on bzip2,

../Randy

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark
> 


-- 
# Randy MacLeod
# Wind River Linux