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Re: Distributed files: licenses
From: |
Bob Friesenhahn |
Subject: |
Re: Distributed files: licenses |
Date: |
Tue, 2 Feb 2010 15:00:53 -0600 (CST) |
User-agent: |
Alpine 2.01 (GSO 1266 2009-07-14) |
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010, NightStrike wrote:
What is the convention held by the typical project out there? I know
nothing about licenses, nor how to actually handle them. All insight
is greatly appreciated.
Copyright information should always be retained and presentable in
some way in order to satisfy the law. A requirement to provide a copy
of the license depends on the terms of the license. My interpretation
of GPL is that anyone distributing binaries is required to also
distribute some notification text. For example, for GPLv2, it is
necessary to provide some text in order to satisfy section 3 of the
license. Quite a lot of GPL-encumbered software is distributed in
violation of its license, in spite of good intentions.
A common way to satisfy license requirements is to include
documentation packages with your binary package, and ensure that the
documentation packages include a copy of the license, and the
requisite provision text which allows you to distribute the binaries
(i.e. your stated obligations). The recipient needs to be notified
somehow in a way that they will notice.
Software which uses a GUI installer can display all copyright and
license information in the installer license text ("Do you accept?")
area.
Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/