On Wed, 2010-05-12 at 20:25 +0200, Sam Geeraerts wrote:
Is it enough that there's a file with a license in the extension or
must every file in the extension also have a license notice? If the
latter, how does that apply to images and other non-functional data
in the extension?
I agree with what Jason said, with a slight clarification. What is
*necessary* for a package to be Free Software is at least one
statement *in the package* that specifically states the exact license
the package is released under; e.g. Foobar is free software: you can
redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either
version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
i.e., the standard boilerplate paragraph.
As I understand it, it is this text that is the actual, critical
license grant.
In order that the package be legally distributable under the GPL by
third parties (i.e. people other than the copyright holder), the
package needs to satisfy the conditions in the GPL, which are: 1) it
must contain a copy of the text of the license (generally, the
earliest permitted version) 2) it must contain sufficient source code
and associated build scripts to enable people to rebuild the package
themselves 3) it must contain appropriate copyright notices (which
generally means the years the package was worked on, and the people
or companies who are the copyright holders)
If a package doesn't furfill these conditions, then it must be
modified such that it does before it is legal for anyone except the
copyright holder to *distribute* it.
None of this gets to the question of where, exactly the "appropriate
copyright notices" and license statement need to be included. In my
view, this is flexible -- as long as it's clear what the copyright
notices and license statements cover, and that all the copyrightable
works in the package are covered by one of the them, it's fine. The
necessary text can be put wherever is convenient and clear.
The way I've been handling adding extension to the list -- if they
have the necessary license statement, they go on the Free list (with
a note if they are un-distributable verbatim due to other lacks), but
I contact them and offer to fix the missing legal boilerplate, and
list them *also* on the Free list talk page, with details of my
contact progress.
If they lack such a clear statement, or specifically say they are
licensed under a non-Free license, then they go on the NonFree list.
Hope this helps,
Jesse Weinstein