On January 3, 2025 3:00:06 PM CST, Sven-Hendrik Haase <svenst...@archlinux.org>
wrote:
>On 03.01.25 21:07, Morten Linderud wrote:
>> Yo,
>>
>> Today I noticed that the "License package sources" RFC contained an amended
>> 0BSD
>> license that added a two paragraph exception for patch files and other
>> auxiliary
>> files. The purpose of this change is to ensure the license is not covering
>> other
>> files in the repository that the author can't license from the upstream.
>>
>> See: https://rfc.archlinux.page/0040-license-package-sources/
>>
>> While this is a practical problem that needs to be solved, we should not be
>> doing that through additional text in a FSF- and OSI approved license. This
>> essentially makes it a custom license that is not really going to detected as
>> 0BSD from external sources, and runs against the original goal of removing
>> legal
>> uncertainty.
>>
>> As the change, and by extension the problem itself, is not mentioned in the
>> text
>> it came as a surprise to me that it was done.
>>
>> What I think is more proper is to remove these two lines from the proposed
>> license file, and move this to a separate RFC that would cover a use of the
>> REUSE specification, or SPDX license identifiers. This would serve the same
>> purpose as the Debian `copyright` files, while also being standardized.
>>
>> I have written a proposed amendment to the text that I hope people find okay.
>>
>> https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/merge_requests/49
>>
>>
>> *Please note that any licenses already added to the repository needs to be
>> amended.*
>>
>>
>> My goal is to write up a RFC for the REUSE/SPDX part of this before the
>> current
>> 3 month timeline where we'll start adding licenses to ensure we don't prolong
>> the process.
>>
>> If people are curious how this would look like, I annotated the `usd`
>> package as
>> an example.
>>
>> https://gitlab.archlinux.org/foxboron/usd/-/tree/morten/reuse
>>
>> See the spec for more details: https://reuse.software/spec-3.2/
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>
>As per the discussion on IRC, I think this suggestion makes sense. I agree
>that the custom 0BSD change should have been called out in the RFC.
>
>I'm ok with changing the RFC text since it's kind of an implementation detail
>to make sure we are in line with the original intent of the RFC. However, we
>need to make sure people are on-board with this as not a trivial RFC change
>and I don't think we've done this before.
>
>Thanks for doing the mockup on usd, really helps to visualize how this would
>look.
I second this. The usd mockup looks good as well.
Campbell
