[OSM-dev] GPL stupidity

[Matthias Julius]

Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemeD.net> writes:

> 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.
>
> Well, yes and no. Our repository contains many projects. For some of  
> them (including Gosmore, Potlatch, and Frederik's contributions), the  
> authors have chosen licences that are compatible with but are more  
> permissive than the GPL:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22public+domain%22+site% 
> 3Asvn.openstreetmap.org
> http://www.google.com/search?q=LGPL+site%3Asvn.openstreetmap.org
>
> Others have chosen licences that may not be compatible with the GPL:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22creative+commons%22+site% 
> 3Asvn.openstreetmap.org
>
> Having the GPL in the root directory (as, indeed, we currently do:  
> http://svn.openstreetmap.org/LICENSE) means that the casual browser  
> could be forgiven for thinking that the whole contents of svn are  
> subject to the GPL's provisions. It would be more sensible to rename  
> LICENSE to gpl.txt, and create a new file (LICENSE, COPYING, whatever  
> you like) explaining that though the default licence for unattributed  
> files is the GNU General Public License ("see gpl.txt"), other files  
> may have their own more or less restrictive terms.

I think generally every source file should state its license at the
beginning (not the complete license text) and every project root
directory should contain all relevant license texts for the project
and information about the license for files that can not contain a
license statement for technical reasons (like binary files).

The same goes for copyright information.

It should be as obvious as possible for anyone to find out such
things.

Matthias