Re: --version output and license specifications

[Paul Eggert]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) writes:

> (Not sure that we still want to refer to the COPYING* files.)

I suggest using a URL instead; that's what several packages do now,
and nowadays it is more convenient than a file and will explain the
abbreviation well.  "sort --version" could output something like this,
say:

  sort (GNU coreutils) 6.2
  Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  License: GPL v2 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
  This is free software.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

If the version number is important, gnu.org should publish stable URLs
for each version of each license.  Currently it doesn't, at least not
for the GPL: I couldn't find the GPLv1 there, for example.

I don't know where the "MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE." came from in the snipped you quoted.  The wording above is
used by coreutils: it's briefer and I think it should be just as good
legally, though I'm no lawyer.

> What do people think of such a thing as a GNU standard?  I see that
> --version output varies widely now ...
>
> To pursue this, I guess a next step would be to look at the list of free
> software licenses and come up with some abbreviations for the ones most
> widely used.  Anyone care to look into that?

The important thing is the URLs, not the abbreviations.  For that,
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html> is a good list.  But
if you want to standardize abbreviations of licenses on that list,
here are some suggestions for abbreviations of free licenses mentioned
there:

GPL
LGPL
GPL+Guile
GPL+Ada
X11
Expat
SMLNJ
public domain [no URL is needed for this one]
CeCILL
Cryptix GL
Modified BSD
Zlib
iMatrix SFL
W3C
Berkeley DB
OpenLDAP
Python
Perl
Artistic
Zope PL
Intel Open Source
NPL+GPL
eCos
Eiffel Forum
Vim
Boost
EU DataGrid Software
Ruby

XFree86
Affero GPL
Condor PL
Original BSD
OpenSSL
Academic FL
Open Software
Apache
Apache Software
Zope
xinetd
IBM PL
Common PL
Eclipse
Phorum
LaTeX Project
MPL
CDDL
NOSL
Interbase PL
Sun PL
Nokia Open Source
NPL
Jabber Open Source
SISSL
QPL
PHP
Zend
Plan 9
Apple Public Source