[Nix-dev] Re: Licensing policy

[Sander van der Burg]

I think it's better to specify licenses in a list for each package (packages could have multiple licenses). 
With "normalized" license strings we could determine whether the package is free, open-source, freely distributable, proprietary (or another predefined class of licenses).

e.g. 

freeSoftwareLicenses = [ "GPL" "LGPL" "BSD" "NPL" ]
openSourceLicenses = [ "GPL" "LGPL" "BSD" "NOSA" ]

examples:
- emacs is both free software and open source because the license of emacs is GPL.
- Qt is free software, open source and proprietary because it's dual licensed under the GPL and a proprietary license

-----Original Message-----
From: nix-dev-bounces at cs.uu.nl on behalf of Ludovic Courtès
Sent: Wed 4/9/2008 2:38 PM
To: nix-dev at cs.uu.nl
Subject: [Nix-dev] Re: Licensing policy
 
Hi,

pjotr2008 at thebird.nl (Pjotr Prins) writes:

> Where do I find the licensing policies?

Licensing policies of what?

Nixpkgs contains packages under all kinds of licenses, including
proprietary binary-only things.

> If a package is redistributable for academic use - what license 'type'
> do I plug in.

Currently, the `license' attribute in Nixpkgs is just a string, so it's
not normalized, although that'd be nice.

> Or always the URL (like some packages do), though I find that
> obfuscating. The license should be obvious to read.

Yes.  When the license is obviously non-free, I'd suggest `license =
"non-free"', and perhaps you can add a `licenseURL' attribute right
after for those who want to know the details.

Thanks,
Ludovic.

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