On 1/6/25 3:49 PM, Rafael Epplée wrote:
Let's consider going with a less explicit way to specify licensing info,
and drastically reduce the work involved:
- Add a LICENSES folder with the original 0BSD text inside
- Instead of REUSE.toml, use the same piece of prose in every repo to
specify which files are covered by the 0BSD, e.g. in the README:
> Binary files, as well as any files describing changes ("patches") to
the software that is being built are provided under the license terms of
the software they describe changes for.
> Any files containing a license notice are provided under the license
terms defined in their respective notices.
> Files not matching the conditions above are provided under the 0BSD
license.
This would have the advantage of being easy to automate, and easy to
implement for devtools maintainers and package maintainers.
I think this is a reasonable approach. I don't think this qualifies as
cruft, if we consider it necessary to put a LICENSE file into every
PKGBUILD repository, this file would be equally valid. It clarifies the
copyright situation with the same level of authority as the LICENSE file
does.
Including a LICENSE and README file into each PKGBUILD repository in the
first place (vs. archlinux/state.git or elsewhere) is something we could
also revisit of course, but I also strongly think we shouldn't use a
custom license text.
I think implementing REUSE for an entire operating system is enough work
to warrant an interim solution. I've been doing this kind of copyright
annotation work for Debian for just shy of about 300 packages and it's a
heroic amount of work to do this for the entire operating system.
cheers,
kpcyrd
