first package: pd-wiimote

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 11:49:42AM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>Every tarball should have a file in it that contains the license.  
>Having that be a standard name like LICENSE.txt makes it really easy 
>to find for people who are doing things like packaging Pd libraries 
>for Debian.  Also, the LICENSE.txt is there for the Pd user and is 
>browsable from within the Pd Help Browser.  Just like Debian users, 
>Pd users should be able to find license information in a easy, 
>standard way.

It is certainly a good thing for you as upstream to release your code 
with its licensing terms included.

Please beware, though, that licensing terms are worth *nothing* if not 
somehow tied to the code which is intended to be licensed by those terms 
- and simply adding a file containing licensing terms to a tarball also 
containing code files is *not* a close enough relation, I believe.

In other words, I believe you should license the code, not the tarball.

If some upstream code lack licensing statement or contains only a vague 
one, but its tarball contains a file named LICENSE.txt containing the 
GPLv2 license, I would treat that code as too vaguely licensed.

If an upstream tarball contains explicit licensing statements of being 
licensed as GNU General Public License version 2, and also refer to some 
file named LICENSE.txt but no such file exist in the tarball, then I 
would assume that the code is licensed by that license.

NB! I am not a lawyer, and do not even represent an "official" stand of 
Debian here, just a personal interpretation.  For a more in-depth 
consideration from the viewpoint of Debian, I recommend to ask questions 
at the debian-legal at lists.debian.org rather than here :-)


Kind regards,

  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/attachments/20100907/d0ac1c3f/attachment.pgp>