[OSM-dev] GPL stupidity

[matthew-osm at newtoncomputing.co.uk]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 12:00:52PM +0000, Gervase Markham wrote:
> It should be in the root directory of SVN. That's the normal practice in 
> other projects - the standard filename is "COPYING". If it's not, we 
> should fix that.

Not so easy with OSM - I guess there are several things in svn that are
not actually GPL.

Personally I would have assumed that the sensible answer says that the
svn repository is a developers collaboration system, not a distribution
system - the GPL (or other licence) should be supplied when the package
is tarballed up and put on a website. Unfortunately people seem to be
using svn more for distribution these days :(

I guess the answer is to put COPYING in the directory with the files,
and on the web site tell people to grab that directory (rather than a
particular file), such as you do with tilesAtHome, for instance.

> Also, a copy must be shipped with binaries. If people are distributing 
> binaries without one (and the other notices the GPL requires), they need 
> to fix that too.

Definitely.

-- 
Matthew